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Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
1839
Document
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Text
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MATTY GORE.
BY MISS C. E. SEDGWICK. [sic]
“Say rather, all his thoughts now flowing clear,
From a clear fountain flowing, he looks round
And seeks for good; and finds the good he seeks.”
[p. 50]
“WHAT ails you, Matty, to sit moping at that window—are you counting the rain-drops that fall on the pavement?
“No, Harry, I was just thinking—that's all.”
“A penny for your thoughts!”
“I was thinking how dismal it is to live in a city! How pleasant it is to hear the soft dropping rain on the grass! and here it is nothing but patter, patter, patter on the dirty pavement; and, as I looked at the lamps that shed such a dim light through the watery air, and at those blank houses opposite with all their windows closed, I remembered how many times I had gone to our east window in the sitting-room at Fairtown, and seen the lights from Mr. Jessup's, and widow Allen's,
[p. 51]
and Deacon Milnor's, and fancied I could see the families, and what they were all about, and it seemed as if I could almost hear their voices. To my eye there is no life in these dwellings—they don't look like homes— nothing is right here; the stars don't look as they did through our clear air, and the thunder don't sound half so good as it did at Fairtown!”
“Why, Matty, you get the blues sitting here alone; if you would go to the theatre with me, and to the public balls, and Miss Wright's lectures, you would find something brighter than starlight, and quite as entertaining as Fairtown thunder.”
“O! Harry, my dear brother, it is your going to such places that makes me more than all wish we were back in Fairtown. I have heard of many young men who were first drawn aside from the narrow path, by going to those public places where so many bad people go. It is not easy for us, while we are young, Harry, to resist temptation, so it is best to fence ourselves about as well as we can.”
“Pray don't preach, Matty.”
“I won't, Harry; don't call it preaching; but do let me speak what is so heavy at my heart. I don't like your going to the theatre, but I would rather you would go there every night, than go to hear infidel lectures.”
“My dear child, you don't know any thing about it; ‘live and let live,’ Matty,—you go your way, and let me go mine.”
[p. 52]
“There is but one way, Harry.”
“That is an old fashioned notion, my dear; in this age of steamboats, and railroads, new ways are opened. Don't look so solemn, Matty, I don't wish to disturb your faith, and so I tell father.”
“O! Harry, that is not what I am afraid of, for I will hold fast that which is good; but disturbed I must be, when I see you and father seeking, as it were, darkness, and avoiding the light that has come into the world. I cannot reason, as the people do who come here and talk with father, and only cloud up the truth; but I feel, and believe.”
Harry, notwithstanding his resolution not to interfere with his sister's faith, could not forbear saying, “A common family division, my dear; 'the men reason— the women believe.”
“No, Harry, that is not fair, for we are required to give a reason for the faith that is in us; therefore faith in man or woman must have reason to support it.”
Matty was interrupted by her father's entrance. He looked displeased. This was unusual; for John Gore, though rough, was not irritable or churlish. He thrust the poker into the grate, and, without seeming to know what he was about, poked out every coal of a light, spring fire; and then turning to Matty he asked, “Are we not going to have tea to-night?”
“I understood you, sir, that you were not coming home to tea.”
[p. 53]
“Well, I suppose I can change my mind.”
“O, yes, sir," said Matty, setting herself eagerly about arranging the tea apparatus.
“And if I may, Miss Martha, it's a privilege I use only on small occasions.” Gore had not called his daughter Martha, half a dozen times in her life. She felt sure she had displeased him, and stopping before him, she said, with all the courage she could summon “Have I offended you, father?”
“Yes--no—make the tea, will you?”
Matty, pale and trembling, went to the little cup board for the tea canister, and her brother left the room whispering, as he went past her, “This storm has blown up from Fairtown, I guess.”
The tea was soon ready, and Matty sat down and poured out cup after cup, which her father swallowed without uttering a word. He rejected the bread and butter which Matty offered, and, in the hope of pleasing him, she set on the table a beefsteak pie. This was an article of food he particularly liked. His wife had excelled in preparing it, and had communicated her skill to Matty. This was the first she had made since their removal from Fairtown.
“Will you take a bit, father?” she asked; “Harry said it tasted just like mother's.”
“No!” he replied, and then added in a softened voice, “not to-night, Matty”—he hemmed and cleared his throat. “Like mother's, is it? your mother never
[p. 54]
disobeyed me. How long, Miss Martha, have you been keeping up a correspondence with Russel Milnor?”
“Simple truth” was Matty's “utmost skill.” “I have had no correspondence with Russel, sir,” she replied, “excepting that he has sent his kind remembrance to me, and I, mine to him.”
“Then this is his first letter, since we left Fairtown, is it?” and he took a letter from his pocket, and threw it across the table.
“It is, sir,” replied Matty, faintly, while her eyes filled and her cheeks glowed with the irrepressible feeling that is awakened in every woman's heart, by the sight of the first love-letter.
“You need not study the outside any longer,” resumed her father, and for the first time Matty raised her eyes, that had been downcast and fixed upon the letter, as he added, “I know every thing that is in it—I don't mean the love and nonsense, but the business part—it came in a letter to me. Why don't you break the seal?”
“I can't, sir,” she answered, and burst into tears. Various feelings struggled in Matty's tender heart. She knew what Russel's letter must contain, the first expression, in words, of a long-cherished affection. She knew that her father had strong prejudices against her lover, and that his prejudices were as rigid as his iron frame. She thought of her mother, and that if she were alive, she would share every feeling with fond
[p. 55]
sympathy; but now, in the trials that awaited her, there was no one to whom to look for sympathy; not even Harry; her dear and only brother, for he too had prejudices against Russel. Matty was of the ivy nature, dependence was habitual to her; but there is no strict analogy between a vegetable and rational existence. The weakest human soul is capable of receiving a divine energy, and if it mount heavenward it needs not to grasp an earthly support. “Hush up your tears, child,” said Gore, “my mind is settled; and you must settle yours, and cry or laugh afterwards, as the case may be. In the first place tell me, how happens it Russel stuck to farming! I thought the Education Society were going to run him over into a minister.”
“Russel was advised to that, sir; but he did not wish to put himself into a dependent situation, and he thought he might serve his Master as acceptably, by being a farmer, as if he were a minister.”
“Cant! but, however, there is some sense in it. There may be now and then an honest professor out of the pulpit; but it's all hypocrisy where there is a bounty paid. It seems Russel has laid up money enough to buy him a farm in Michigan. He has bought it, and now has the modesty to ask my leave to let you go out and help him take care of it. If you go, mark me! you go contrary to my wishes and my judgment; but I don't forbid it. I am not one of their religious folks,
[p. 56]
who think they have a divine right to lord it over the world. I believe that women, though they are far enough from being fit for it, have a right to independence; and, therefore, you are free to go; but if you go, never come back to my house again—never expect any help from me, be the case what it will; for Russel Milnor's wife's husband will be always the man that I can't abide. I don't set up any right over you. I am an enemy to all arbitrary authority—to father-craft, as well as kingcraft and priestcraft.” John was just as honest as others are when, giving way to the impulse of temper and prejudice, they fancy themselves acting in obedience to an established principle.
There had been an old feud between Deacon Milnor and John Gore, which eventuated in a long pending lawsuit. Gore finally gained the suit, and, as is common in country neighbourhoods, the general sympathy was with the losing party, and Gore, alienated from his old friends, transferred his residence from Fairtown to New York, where he still followed successfully the vocation of master-builder. Gore was a strong, though narrow-minded man. He saw clearly, but he looked through a knot-hole. He never had any religious faith, unless the accidental belief of his childhood might be dignified by that name. He had always treated lightly the faith of his wife, a meek
“Traveller between life and death.”
He took pride in differing from the strictly religious
[p. 57]
community in which he lived, and contracted a very common habit of looking at the abuses of religion, at the dishonour which the bigotries, pretensions, and lapses of its false professors cast upon it, while he was deaf and blind to the testimony, on every side, of its true disciples. After he went to town, he fell in with some clamorous skeptics, and had not the ability, or, alas! the inclination to resist their specious arguments. They were, like Gore, uninstructed men, but they could quote the names of Hobbes and Hume, and Gore's vanity pleased itself with the idea that his preconceived opinions were in accordance with these great mens'. Wo to the ignorant, who are not intrenched in the strongest hold of Christianity, a deep, heart-felt conviction of its truth, resulting from an experience of its adaptation to the wants of humanity!
Gore has hinted his theoretical respect for the “rights of women.” He had recently imbibed it from a certain eloquent lecturer, who has done them worse than doubtful service. The truth was, he looked upon the whole sex with a feudal eye; regarding women as liege subjects, if not “born thralls” of their natural lords; and if his new notions forced him to admit that they were possible equals, he had never yet doubted they were actual inferiors. John Gore's theories had made as yet no apparent difference in his mode of life; his industrious habits were fixed, and the external moralities were second nature to him; but that spiritual work of
[p. 58]
subduing the passions, disciplining the temper, and elevating the affections, John had never yet begun.
But while John Gore went on in his old track, the effect of their new associations on his son Harry, was but too obvious. He had cast aside the faith of his boyhood, but he was too much under the dominion of his senses, to adopt practically the theories of virtue inculcated by his new teachers. He had rejected his mother's pious instructions as nursery tales, and in his change of residence he had escaped from the vigilance and restraints of a moral community. He was destined to learn too late, or never to learn, that the only safe liberty for a young person, in the flush of life, is the liberty that follows self-conquest. Harry Gore was just two-and-twenty; handsome, with that frank and gay expression so captivating to young women, and with that manliness, reckless generosity and impulsive ardour, which altogether constitute the “whole-souled” character so attractive to young men. With these characteristics this unfortunate young man was introduced by his father to a society of skeptics; and by his young companions plunged into the second or third-rate dissipation of a great city. The character of his career might be foreseen; its sad particulars time alone could disclose.—But we forget that it is not Harry Gore's story we are writing. We left John Gore producing a miserable perplexity in his daughter's mind, by the annunciation of his
[p. 59]
wishes, his judgment, and his will. She saw that, by the terms of his opposition, she might follow her inclination without violating the letter of filial obedience; but the spirit of all her duties governed Matty Gore; and though we think she erred, she believed that in all circumstances the precept, “honour your parents,” required the surrender of her own wishes to her father's.
Accordingly, when she answered her lover's letter, which she did that sleepless night, while her tears almost blinded her, she made no secret of the state of her affections. She repeated all that had occurred that evening, and concluded by saying, that her duty was implicit submission to her father's wishes.
We have given merely the points of Matty's letter; the essence of such a letter is of too delicate a nature to be imparted.
To these points came, immediately, a reply from Russel Milnor, enclosed in a letter to Gore, in which he communicated the purport of that to his daughter. Russel said that he trusted he should be enabled to submit to a known duty, even though it required such a martyrdom as the relinquishment of Matty; but that his view of the case differed totally from her's. "You were twenty-one, the first day of this present month, Matty," he said, "and at that age the law allows men and women, if ever they were capable, to be capable of judging for themselves. If your father alleged any thing against my character, or any thing in my circum-
[p. 60]
stances, that formed a reasonable barrier to our union, it would be your duty to acquiesce; but where there is no such reason, I cannot think that parents have a right to control their children. They marry for themselves, not for their parents. In the course of nature they must long survive them. It is, then, their own concern, and they ought to act independently, according to their light, that is, according to the dictate of their best judgment, and of tried affection. Parents do not enough respect the rights of their children on this subject. They interfere by their wishes, their biases, and their manoeuvring. It is an inexpressible happiness when parents approve the choice of their children; but no right of theirs to direct or mar this choice. Our affections are amenable to God only, and when He has joined, man should not sunder them. I have not urged my wishes or my love, for beside that you know I should neither expect nor wish it to prevail against your sense of duty; that once settled in your mind, I am sure, wherever the sacrifice may fall, you will act in conformity to it.”
Before this letter arrived a sudden and great change had taken place in John Gore's domestic arrangements. He had placed at the head of his household a very pretty and flippant young woman, some months Matty's junior, whom he called his wife. Matty had painful reason to suspect that this marriage was merely one of those fragile, and evanescent ties substituted for the holy one of God's appointment, and advocated by a few
[p. 61]
of her father's new associates. Emboldened by that courage which religion alone could inspire in a timid girl, who had grown up in habitual awe of her father; she determined to know from himself the truth; and she took the first occasion, when neither the new Mrs. Gore nor Harry were present, to ask her father, "If he wished her to call his wife, mother?” John's eye fell, and a deeper hue dyed his sanguine cheek, as he an- swered; “Yes—no—that is to say, just as you like; a name does not signify.”
“That name seems to me,” replied Matty; “to signify more than all other words;” and while she spoke, the eye that she kept steadfastly fixed on him filled with tears, and his quailed under it; as that of the lower animals is said to do, beneath the intellectual ray of man. “Father,” she continued; “it is best to speak plain my meaning; I cannot profane that word mother. Is this person my mother in the eye of the law?”
“The law has nothing to do with the matter, and the gospel less,” cried Gore, recovering his usual tone. “She is my wife, according to her view, and my view; and if you don't like her for a mother, you need not make one of her; and that's the end on't.”
“O! father, it is not the end,” exclaimed Matty; in the earnestness of her feeling, forgetting her habitual quietness, and falling on her knees at his feet. “It is God's law you are violating; O! pray, pray, do not bring this shame on us all! this dishonour and misery
[p. 62]
on your old age! O! send her away, sir! Those men that come here, and scoff at all that's good and holy, have been a snare to your soul. Send her away, father, and let us go back to Fairtown; or, lay me down there by mother's grave.”
“Hush! Matty, my child; hush!” His voice was softened, and Matty proceeded. “Dear father, God has made misery to follow sin—even in this world—and there is a judgment to come—for the deeds done in the body, we must give account. What signifies all they say! we know, we feel it in ourselves; there is a heaven, and there is a hell.”
While Matty was speaking the last words, the door opened and Mrs. Gore, flushed with exercise, and the pleasurable excitement of a walk with her young gallant, Harry, entered. Harry divined the meaning of the scene and disappeared; and Mrs. Gore, with affected unconcern, echoed in a soft under tone, “Hell! bless my soul, Miss Matty! a big word for a mealy-mouthed young woman.”
Matty rose from her knees, and turned on the woman a look so full of sorrow, so beaming with the elevation of a spirit immeasurably above her, that she shrunk away abashed. Gore was dimly conscious of a feeling akin to that of a bully, when he is detected by a comrade in an act of cowardice; he rose, and blustered round the room, muttering something of “Matty's nonsense and superstition!”
[p. 63]
Poor Matty went to her own little room, and there remained, in tears and prayers, till she was roused by her father's voice calling her. She met him at the head of the stairs. He gave her Russel's letter, saying, “Russel acts above-board; I give him credit for this; it's his mother's blood, not his sneaking father's. I know, mainly, what is in his letter to you, by one he has written to me. He says what I said to you; that you have a right to follow your inclinations. I'll hold no woman in bondage. One thing that I said to you when Russel first proposed, I take back; the rest must stand. Circumstances alter cases; and now, if you marry Russel, you will not act against my wishes; but remember, Matty! no person that bears the name of Milnor shall ever enter my doors, or have a penny of my property. I have chosen my way, you are free to choose your's.”
There are periods when thoughts pass so rapidly, and the affections will work with such energy, that we seem in brief instants to have lived an age. This was such a moment to Matty. While her father was speaking, the prospect he opened before her, of leaving her wretched home, to live with him who would have made any desert home to her, seemed like a gleam of paradise; and then the thought of leaving her father to wear out his last days in sin and certain misery, closed the gate of happiness against her. “If I could but save him,” she said, mentally, “I would relinquish every
[p. 64]
earthly hope; I am weak, but for such a work, there is strength that will be made perfect in my weakness.” When he had finished speaking, she said in a very low but resolute voice; “Father, there is something nearer my heart than Russel; it is that you should do the right thing.”
“Stop there, Matty! you have taken me to task once, and that is once too many. Water won't run up hill; fathers won't be chidden by their children.”
“But once more, father, I beg you to hear me; but once more.”
“No, no!” he cried, but in a gentler voice; for he was softened; who could resist that earnest and most sweet countenance? “No, Matty! I must follow my light.”
“O! father; that light is darkness: hear me, I beseech you, in the name of God.”
“No, no, Matty! you are too superstitious; there is no use.”
“In the name of my mother, then.”
“You look now like her own self—speak—say quick what you have to say.”
“O! think that it is my mother pleading with you; think that you are back in those days when you believed in truth, and followed after good. Forgive me, forgive me, sir, but I must speak. I must pray you to repent and return to Him, who is ever ready to receive those who forsake their sins. Send away this bad woman,
[p. 65]
father! I will stay with you; I will never, never leave you. I will write to Russel that I have solemnly devoted myself to you. I will do every thing to make your home comfortable and cheerful; it will be neither, with this woman. I will watch over Harry, night and day; I will do all, with God's help, that child and sister can do.”
“You have not considered, Matty.”
“I have considered, sir; and resolved.”
“Well, let me go; let me go; I must consider too;” and he turned from his child, and with faltering steps, and a purpose that now faltered for the first time, retraced his way to his little parlour, while Matty returned to her own room, to strengthen her resolution with prayer; and so strengthened was she by this holy office, that she read Russel's letter with calmness, and sat down to write to him all that had occurred, with a conviction that he would acquiesce in the sacrifice they were to make. But her generosity was not to have its reward. If Gore had been left alone to the workings of conscience, and the gracious ministry of his awakened affections, he might have been saved; but his evil genius interposed. The woman who had led him away from domestic purity and peace, came in while his countenance was dark and agitated with the stormy conflict of right and wrong. With the quick instincts of her sex, she perceived the nature of his disturbance, and suspected
[p. 66]
the source of it. Her youth, beauty and art, soon enabled her to regain her ascendancy over the weak old man, who had nothing to oppose to her but the good feelings that his daughter had awakened. Faith and its securities were gone.
In the course of the morning the following brief note was brought to Matty by the servant girl.
“You've been a good child, and serviceable to me, Matty; and I give you the enclosed, (a hundred dollar note.) It is but justice to say I've nothing to complain of from you; but we've come to the parting point, Matty. It is best we should not have any good bye- ing. I am going out for the rest of the day. Pack and direct your things, and I will send them after you. You had best go to your aunt's before night, as I mistrust we should not all sleep well under the same roof.
“Your father, John Gore.”
Poor Matty! this was almost too much for her to bear. Religion even, cannot soothe the anguish that sin inflicts; the sin of those we love. Matty sat for some time stupified; suddenly she was roused by the thought that she might make an appeal to the woman, who seemed to her the personification of evil. She gained admittance to her room. She was dressed gayly, and was arranging some artificial flowers on her hat preparatory to a walk. She was flurried by the sight of the innocent girl; and she said—the most na-
[p. 67]
tural thing to say—looking at Matty's swollen eyes and colourless cheek; “You don't seem well, Miss Matty.”
“O! I am not well—I am sick—sick at heart;” and she was obliged to grasp the bed-post against which she stood for support.
It is useless to enter into the particulars of the conversation that ensued. Every thing that a pure woman and a devoted child could say, Matty urged; every argument of religion, she exhausted in vain.
There is no harder subject to deal with, than a young woman who has thrown down the bulwarks of religion, and defied the usages of society; not blinded and impelled by the impulses of passion, but a voluntary sacrifice to vanity and selfishness. Matty could not awaken her fears, for she felt secure in her young life; and she could not touch her affections, for their fountains were dried away. Wearied and sick at heart, the poor girl returned to her own room.
A less spiritual being would have been satisfied; would have felt that, having done her filial duty, she was free to indulge the yearnings of her heart. But to this good young person it was not so. She did not act simply with reference to quieting her own conscience. She felt that there must be a most bitter infusion in her cup, while the death of the soul was impending over her father and brother. Her letter to her lover was coloured by her sad feelings. She assented to his plans
[p. 68]
and appointed the time for their meeting; and then reverted to her deep anxieties in a prayer, that she might be patient and never without hope, in the greatest of all tribulations.
After leaving her father's house, she saw her brother repeatedly, but all her efforts to influence him were ineffectual. He did not listen seriously to her entreaties; he did not oppose her arguments with reason; but answered her only with bantering and ridicule; fruits of the lightest, the most hopeless soil.
----------
We resume our story at a period rather more than three years subsequent to Matty's separation from her father. He still occupied the comfortable house in Elm street, in which she had left him; but how changed was its interior! The simplicity, neatness, and precision that, under her regime, had seemed the type of her well-ordered mind, had given place to slatternliness, disorder, and finery. A crazy auction pier-table, with tarnished gilding, occupied the place of the spotless waxed mahogany table with falling leaves, a Fairtown friend. The old family Bible had disappeared, and in its stead was a vase of French flowers, with a cracked shade. The new Mrs. Gore had substituted for the honest, old windsor conveniences which she condemned as “too Presbyterian,” defaced and rickety mahogany chairs, that looked as if they had mouldered at a pawnbroker’s. Over the mantel-piece had hung,
[p. 69]
time out of mind, (for it was an heirloom from Matty's maternal ancestors,) the picture of a tree bearing symbolical fruit, each apple labelled with the name of one of the Christian graces. Its perpetual verdure was preserved by an angel who was watering it, while the evil one stood in the background menacing it with a scythe. This picture, which Matty looked upon with almost a Catholic’s love, had been much derided by Gore's new friends; and with a reluctance that he was half ashamed of, he had consented to the substitution of a tarnished chimney mirror.
But John Gore stood at bay, at the next proposed alteration. His fine young lady bought a tawdry French clock, which she insisted would serve for use and ornament too; instead of a faithful old family time-piece.
“The old clock,” urged Gore, “is as true as the sun.”
“That, my dear love, is of no consequence; we have town-clocks all about us that are regulated by the sun. At Fairtown this horrid old thing might have been useful; but in the city, you know, a clock is chiefly for looks.”
“Like every thing else!” muttered John. “They build their houses for looks, and they tumble down over their heads. They buy their furniture for looks; and it warps and snaps, and is good for nothing. They take their wives for looks, and they”-----
[p. 70]
“My dear, darling husband!”
John Gore suppressed the bitter words that were on his lips, but the tender deprecation of his wife had not the accustomed effect. Either his vanity had lost something of its susceptibility, or his lady (we cannot profane the name of wife) had worn out her poor arts of cajoling. He stood for some moments before the fire, silent, with his hands behind him, as was his wont, when a tempest was gathering; and then burst forth, calling his wife by her unchanged name, as he always did when displeased with her. “I warn you, Angeliky Foot”-----
“My dear Mr. Gore, pray say Angelica!”
He merely raised his voice a tone higher, as he resumed. “I warn you, Angeliky Foot, not to sell that clock; it's the only thing nowadays that keeps me peaceable; it was my father's; it marked the prayer-time, and the meal-time, and the play-time; when all I knew was to do my duty. It struck the hour for my marriage; it told the hour of my children's birth. In my Fairtown home, it was true to us, and we were true to that. When my wife died it sounded like a tolling bell. Well it might! well it might! Once, again, it tolled! when Matty passed that threshold! and well it might then too! And now, when all is ajar, and out of time, that still is true. Its old face, as it were, speaks to me; and there are times when its look of quiet, gone-by days, is all that keeps my temper from rising over
[p. 71]
bounds. So I warn you, Angeliky Foot, not to say another word of parting with it.”
Angelica Foot did not at that time; but at prudent intervals and fortunate moments she resumed the topic, and John Gore at last yielded, as many yield, to whom “carrying the day,” seems not worth the trouble of continued resistance. He yielded however only to a compromise. The old clock was removed up stairs, and out of sight, and the “bargain,” of what John descriptively designated as “a bit of French trumpery,” bought.
Not long after this change was made, John came home one day at his usual time. He was as punctual as the old clock, and had been so rigid in the enforcement of this observance upon Miss Angelica Foot, that she, aware of the importance of keeping on his blind side, had taken care that a domestic should supply her short-comings, and have Gore's meals ready for him, when she, on the pretext of a headache, was lying in bed, or strolling in Broadway, or sitting with a sick friend. On such occasions an alibi might have been proved, by such as saw her taking a drive, far out of town, with Harry Gore!
But, on the morning to which we allude, John came home and found his little parlour looking much like a slattern, when the morning light has dawned upon her coarse and dirty finery. Every thing was out of place. The lamps of the preceding night were still dimly burn-
[p. 72]
ing. His eye involuntarily turned towards the clock, to see if he had not mistaken the hour of the day. The pointers as usual were motionless. He muttered a malediction, and proceeded through the unswept entry, down stairs to the little basement room, where he was accustomed to find his meridian meal. There were no signs of it. He went to the kitchen. There was no apparent preparation for dinner. Gore heard voices above, from one of the chambers; he followed the sound and burst most unexpectedly upon his wife, Harry, and two female friends of hers, who had forgotten him and every thing else, in the excitement of preparing for a masquerade ball. In the most innocent circumstances, it is rather provoking to find those whose duty it is to minister to our necessities, occupied with their own pleasures. The masks, ribands, flowers, and finery of all sorts, with which the room was cluttered, operated on Gore's temper as the colour of scarlet does on some enraged animals. His fury broke forth in the most unmeasured expressions. The lady-friends escaped. “What do you here, at this time of day, sir!” he asked, turning fiercely to his son.
“What do I!” he answered, with affected calmness; “why, you know, sir, it's the hour when all regular labourers go home to their meals.”
“Regular! I wonder when you have done an hour's work, regular or irregular. I tell you, sir, what I have told you before; that I'll not have you loitering here
[p. 73]
with Angeliky Foot, when I am out of the house. ‘Children, obey your parents,’ is a law that I'll uphold while I have breath.”
“Ah, father!” replied Harry, uttering a biting truth, in a manner still gay and careless. “Ah, father, quoting Scripture! You can't expect, sir, your son will wear the yoke you have broken, and trampled under foot.” Anxious to be off, before a return blow could be given, he hurried on his surtout while speaking, and in his haste accidentally dropped from it an unsealed letter. The address to himself, caught John Gore's eye. “From Matty!” he exclaimed; “why did you not give me this?”
“I forgot it; it can't be of any consequence; only one of Matty's preachments, I guess.” Harry told the truth; he had forgotten it. The poor young man had rejected the high motives to virtue, and its sanctions; and in his present downward course of life, his affections were perishing for lack of nourishment.
The sight of a letter from Matty in the midst of all this discomfort and discord, went to John Gore's heart. He put on his spectacles to read it, but they were soon blurred, and he was obliged to take them off again, and again, to clear them before he could proceed. We must premise that Matty, scrupulous in the performance of her duties, had written to her father at regular intervals since their separation, without receiving or hoping for a return.
[p. 74]
"Fairmount, Michigan,20th June, 183-
“My Ever Dear Father.—I think so much of you that I must believe you have not quite forgotten me. O! what a good gift is memory! (“to the good it may be,” thought Gore;) how it peoples the wilderness with dear recollected forms! how it brings to life again the long past pleasures of childhood! the time that was, before any trouble or change had come! How it carries me back to those pleasant Saturday evenings, when every thing, having been done decently and in order, for in every thing mother went after Scripture rule, (Gore looked round on the litter of gauzes and tinsel, and heaved a deep sigh,) Harry and I sat down on our little benches beside her, and learned our Bible lesson for Sunday. They were always got before the clock struck eight; the dear old clock that told the coming on of happy mornings, and peaceful nights. I wonder if it keeps good time yet?
“But, dear father, I sat down, not to write of the past, but to tell you of our present condition; which, thanks to the Giver of all good, has much improved since my last. The failure of crops the first season was a disappointment, and the loss of stock occasioned by low and insufficient feed fell heavy upon us; but we did not murmur. I have one sorrow at heart, that always makes worldly troubles seem light; (“Matty's religion is no sham,” thought Gore;) and Russel says he has received too much good at the hand of the Lord, to mur-
[p.75]
mur at a little evil. Last year we should have done finely, but for Russel's long sickness; but that is past now, and we trust it has done a good work for us, in making us more fully realize the worth of that hope which sustained us, when the world seemed vanishing from us. Now every thing prospers around us. I can almost see the wheat and corn grow; for in this rich soil it does not take the whole summer, as it does at the east, to come to perfection. It seems as if the Al- mighty had made gardens in this wilderness; and, dear father, I often think that if you and Harry could stand in the door of our little loghouse here at Fairmount, and look over the prairie; all that part of it which is still untouched by the hand of man, that the sight of it would draw you near to Him who created it. Those who live in cities, where nothing but man's hand is seen, may forget God, especially if there be temptation about them, to lure the eye and enchant the ear; as in poor Harry's case; but here, father, with this vastness around us; this stillness—with nothing for the eye to see but the beautiful earth God has created, and the Heavens that declare his glory, His presence is felt, and the heart goes out to Him, as naturally as a little child to its parent. O! that you and Harry were here! My little Sybil is now twenty months old. I hardly ever speak her name without thinking of you, for you were the only person I ever heard call mother by that
[p. 76]
name; and I am sure, father, I seldom think of you without a prayer in my heart to God for your best good. (“Religion does make children faithful!” thought Gore.) Sybil already speaks quite plain; and in her morning and evening duty she is taught always to remember you, father! I have a little brother for her, just six months old. I should have given him your name, if I had thought it would be pleasing to you, to have your name joined with his father's. Please tell my brother, with my love, that I call him Harry. (An involuntary prayer escaped from John's lips, “The Lord make him another kind of a man!”) O, father! what a different feeling I have had for my parents since my children were born! Short-sighted creatures are we indeed, that we must stand just in the places of others, before we can see and feel as they do! Such are now my feelings, that I think, nay, I am sure, I would give up my life freely to have you brought to the faith and love of the gospel; and what is life to that eternal happiness which awaits the humblest followers of Jesus?
“But, dear father! I would not weary you. Pray do not get so tired of my letters that you will not read them; and pray let me beg you, once more, if any great good or great sorrow comes upon you, to let some word of it be sent to your ever affectionate and dutiful daughter, MATTY.”
[p. 77]
“Good! good! will any good ever come to me?” thought Gore, in the bitterness of his heart; and then a prayer—an aspiration should we not rather call it—rose from the depths of his soul. “O ! my child, my child! would that I were altogether such as you are!” This was the first gleam of light.
Time went on; and Gore's out-of-door life presented its accustomed aspect. His habits of industry were now almost his sole comfort. He was a skilled artisan, and in the busy and flourishing city of New York, his art found ample employment and large reward. His earnings were consumed by his idle son and exacting lady. Gore was generous in his nature, and parted with his money without a regret; but frugal in his own habits, and rational in his views of the uses of money, it irritated him to see it wasted, and worse than wasted. He became reserved in his supplies, and finally, a terrible suspicion having taken possession of his mind, he drove his son from his house, and reminded Angelica Foot that she was but a tenant at will; and that the light bond that united them could be broken at his pleasure. “At my pleasure, too,” thought Angelica. A few evenings after, Gore was on some business in a distant part of the city; he met two persons, veiled and muffled, who struck him, as he passed them, as resembling Harry and Angelica Foot. He stood still to observe them: then followed them a few steps; and then, cursing his own folly, and resolving that if he returned
[p. 78]
and found her gone, he would bar his doors forever against her; he resumed his homeward way. She was not in his house. “She will return to me, to-morrow,” he said, “as she has done before, and tell me she has been watching with her sick cousin; but I know now, what I then suspected! This surely is from the hand of God; it is fitting I should be punished by the child I led astray.”
It was a proof that Gore's conscience was awakened, that he turned from upbraiding others to a crushing consciousness of his own sins. Tears gushed from his eyes; his limbs seemed sinking under him; and he leaned against the mantel-piece for support, when a letter sealed with black, in Matty's hand, caught his eye. A longer interval than usual had passed since he had heard from her. He seized it eagerly.
It was of a date two years later than the one we have already transcribed. It had been written at intervals, “in affliction and anguish of heart; and,” as the blistered paper witnessed, “with many tears.” It began,
“MY EVER DEAR FATHER.—My last letter to you was written as soon as I could hold a pen, after the birth of my second son, my little Russel. Since then I have not written to you, because I have many misgivings that you have more than trouble enough of your own; and 1 know further, by what I feel, that there is that in a parent's heart which cannot be torn out of it; and that
[p. 79]
however contrary appearances may be, my sorrows would weigh upon you; though my sorrows are, I fear, far lighter than your own.” (“God knows they are, whatever they may be,” murmured Gore.) “After Russel's birth I fell into a low fever, which is apt to set in on such occasions, and after I got a little better of that, the doctor said I was threatened with a decline; and recommended a journey; and my dear husband, who has always set my health and comfort before every earthly possession, got a trusty woman to take care of our children, and took me down to Buffalo, by the lake, to return by land. The journey was greatly blessed to me, and every thing went as we desired, till, on our way home, we were overtaken by heavy rains, and delayed two weeks. A fatal delay for us. When we arrived at home, we found that the woman left in charge of our children, not being able to overstay the time she had engaged for, had gone and left our little family in the care of a young girl. In consequence of her ignorance and neglect, poor little Harry had taken cold, and was dreadfully ill with an inflammatory rheumatism, and my poor baby seemed pining away. It had pleased God to restore my strength, and I entered upon the care of my children with resolution and hope.
“The low lands were overflowed by the freshet, and the crops much injured. They required my husband's immediate care. He overworked himself, and his fatigue and the stagnant water in the coves brought on a
[p. 80]
terrible fever. Six weeks have passed since he took to his bed. The fever is broken; but, O! my dear father, he seems sinking away, and I look for the worst; humbly trusting that God will enable me to bear what he sees fit to lay on me.”
-----
“Ten days have passed, my dear father; God has been merciful to little Harry. He is on his feet again, though still pale and feeble. My dear husband is no better. O ! my heart and strength fail me, when I think of what is coming. When Russel sees me drooping, he says, with a sweet smile, ‘stay your heart on God, Matty;’ and I do. O, father! how can those bear life whose hearts are not so stayed?
“My baby revived after we got home, and seemed to be thriving again; and was a great comfort to his father. When the little creature was sleeping, his father would have the cradle beside his bed. It seemed as if there was something in the sight of such sweet innocence, composing to the spirit. Last week the little fellow had a bad turn again, and two days ago, when he was evidently dying, my husband would have me sit with him, by his bedside. Together we watched his last breathings. O! my dear father, I thought then—I think now —that if you had lost one of us in infancy, you would never have doubted there was another world. The smile of my boy as his closing eye met mine for the last time, might convert a soul to faith in Jesus; for it
[p. 81]
was a speaking confirmation of His words, ‘of such is the kingdom of heaven.’ In that sweet smile there was love that cannot die; light beaming from immortality. We buried him the next day. The doctor was the only friend with us. He dug the grave under an oak tree, a few yards from our bed-room window. My husband selected the spot. He can see it, when he is raised on his bed. It is a trial, father, to a mother, to lay her child out of her arms into the cold earth; but there is in it no bitterness—no fear—no doubt. Believe me, dear father, for while I say it—I am sorely pressed upon —any thing may be borne, but sin and separation from God.”
(The letter dropped from Gore's hands; “That cannot!” he exclaimed; and in the anguish of his heart he cried aloud.)
-----
“Ten days have passed since my baby's death. My husband is sinking fast. The doctor told us yesterday, that our separation might take place at any moment. When he went out, Russel said, ‘This is much hardest for you, Matty. Rest on God's promises. He has never been known to forsake the widow and fatherless that put their trust in Him; we cannot be separated long; we know that we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. I asked him if he had any directions to give about the children. ‘None,’ he said, ‘none; you will bring them
[p. 82]
up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I have no anxieties for them, Matty; I have for you; but I am trying to cast off this care.’ He has given me his advice as to all earthly matters; he seems to have forgot nothing.”
-----
“It is over. He died at sunrise this morning; he sat up, supported by the doctor; his last look was on that little green mound under the oak tree, and then at me. I had been alone with him all night. Never, father, did I witness such faith; such peace; such joy; and, I may add, such thought for others. Surely he had drank deep of his Saviour's spirit. Before the children were put to sleep last night, he would have them come and kneel down at the bedside, while he prayed with us for the last time. Father, he remembered you and Harry! 0! how he prayed that you might be brought to believe in Jesus; ‘the resurrection and the life.’ Father, you will! you will! I am too weak to write more, his words are all written on my heart.
‘We buried him yesterday. Kind friends came to help us. There was no clergyman; but we had prayers and hymns, and a fitting service; and we laid him there beside the baby, where they will rest together, till this mortal puts on immortality. O! father, what a frightful, fathomless abyss, must the grave be to an unbeliever!”
[p. 83]
“Ten days have passed; my strength is a little recruited. Every thing has been done as my husband wished. You know many things have gone against us in a worldly way, since we have been here. I have sold all the personal property except the bed, and a little silver, and other valuables bought with the hundred dollars you gave me, and paid our debt to the doctor, and all other debts. I have fifty dollars over, for my journey to Fairtown. My husband wished me to return there, as I can do nothing here. The land may be something for the children hereafter. I begin my journey to-morrow. The lateness of the season makes it imprudent to delay. I intend taking the steamboat at Detroit. Farewell, dear father, may God have mercy on us all!”
“Amen !—amen!” cried Gore, clasping his hands, while tears poured like rain down his cheeks. It was a sleepless but a blessed night to him. Silence and solitude are powerful enforcements of conscience. Gore had never felt the influence of religion. In his youth he lived more even than most young persons, in the outward world. He judged of causes by their effects. He compared Matty's course to his own, and to Harry's. In the midst of disappointments and grievous afflictions, she dwelt in the light of another world; she was borne up by an immortal principle; the fire did not consume her, nor the floods overwhelm her. What was
[p. 84]
Harry's condition; what his own, at this moment! Like Mackenzie's philosopher, Gore wished he had never doubted; but, unlike him, he doubted no longer. For the first time since he had come to man's estate, he, that night, bent his knees to his Creator!
The next morning, before going out to his affairs; he dismissed Angelica's servant, and determined to lock his door, to prevent that bad woman access to his house. He had received the night before two thousand dollars, in payment of a debt, too late to deposit it in the bank; his first errand out was to go there with it. On opening the desk where he had put the money, he found that it was gone. The desk had been opened by a false key. The loss of the money was no insignificant matter to Gore, but every other feeling was swallowed up in the horror of the belief that Harry was a participator in the robbery. He resolved at once, to keep it secret; he told it only to one friend. A secret should have but one keeper.
We return to Matty, who was driven, with her two children, in a wagon to Detroit. She passed the night there, before embarking in the steamboat, and was compelled to sleep in a room filled with emigrants; the women of half a dozen families, Scotch, Irish, and German. When she went to bed, she put her pocket, containing her pocket-book, with her little store of bank notes, under her pillow. Worn out with fatigue, and the watchful nights of many weeks, she slept soundly.
[p. 85]
In the morning the pocket-book was gone! Matty, unconscious of her loss, paid her bill from a purse in the pocket of her dress where she had a small sum for present use. Her box, containing her bed, &c, had been left on the wharf with the steamboat baggage; and Matty, knowing little of the ill chances of a traveller, had no further anxiety but to get herself and her children on board. As soon as they had put off, and her weak head, which had reeled with the confusion of the embarkation, had recovered a degree of steadiness, she went to look after her baggage. A trunk, containing her own and her children's apparel was forthcoming, but the box was left behind.
“This is a heavy loss to you, ma'am,” said a good-natured man, who had assisted her search. “Yes,” said Matty, with a melancholy smile which the man seemed truly to interpret; for he added; “but, Lord bless me, ma'am, I think you have met with greater.”
“I guess she has,” said little Sybil; “for she has lost father and the baby, and we are all alone!”
“Well, well!” said the man, brushing away a tear; “the greater burden makes the lesser one feel light— that's a comfort, anyhow.”
Poor Matty was destined to farther experience of the truth of her comforter's philosophy. It was not long before the crier called out to the passengers from Detroit, to “come to the Captain's office, and pay their passages!” Matty waited till the press was over, and
[p. 86]
then went forward. The captain told her the amount, and, taking her little boy in his arms, was addressing a kind word to him, when he perceived the mother turn suddenly very pale.
“My pocket-book is gone,” she said; “I have not a dollar left! What is to become of us?” Her sense of their utter destitution overcame her, and she covered her face with her hands, and sank down on a bench. The children crept into her lap, and put their arms around her. Sybil whispered, “Why, mother! Mother, you always say God will take care of us? Won’t he now, mother?”
The captain fixed his eye steadfastly on the poor mother. He was accustomed to every mode of imposition and evasion, but this was truth; he felt assured, and it went to his heart, as warm and generous as any man’s; and, despite his hackneyed life, untouched by cupidity, and incapable of selfish suspicion. His attention was for a moment called off by some applicants at the office; and when it again reverted to Matty, she had wiped away her tears, and said calmly, “You must excuse me, sir; I have been through great fatigue and trouble lately;” her voice faltered, and little Sybil interposed. “She means father and baby are dead, sir.” “I see plainly,” resumed Matty, “there is but one thing to be done; I must be set on shore at the first landing place.”
“Where were you bound, ma’am?” asked the cap-
[p. 87]
tain in a voice that indicated sympathy and respect. Matty told him. He inquired, “if she expected to find friends there.”
“It is my native place, sir,” she replied; loath to enter into further particulars.
“Then,” said the captain, “we must get you there as fast as steamers and canal-boats can take you. You are in no state to be put ashore, my friend, and left to shift for yourself.” He called to the chambermaid. “Give this lady No. 15,” he said, “and a settee, and see that she has every attention and comfort.” Then taking Sybil in his arms, and kissing her, he said; “God does take care of good little children, my dear.”
“And so do good men, too!” replied the child, returning his caress. The mother smiled through her tears. It was a smile full of sweetness, peace, and gratitude. She could not speak. The captain understood her. He replaced Sybil in her arms, and turned away. Matty retired to her berth; and there her full heart found utterance without the aid of voice.
Subsequently it occurred to her, that the contents of her box, if recovered, might afford a compensation to the captain, and she told him so. “There is not much of value in the box,” she said, “excepting a bed, but it is a very good one.”
“I do not doubt it,” he replied; “or that I shall recover it; but I shall sleep all the better on my own bed, for thinking you have got yours in safety. Say no
[p. 88]
more about it, Mrs. Milnor; it is not every trip, up or down the lake, I have a chance of doing a good turn to a person I respect so much as I do you.”
When they arrived at Buffalo, the captain himself attended her to the canal-boat, and got an assurance from its commander that Mrs. Milnor should be forwarded free of expense to Albany; and then giving her a basket, well packed with an ample store of good provisions, he took a kind leave. Subsequently the box, directed and forwarded by the captain, came safely into Matty's possession.
These particulars of the captain's humanity, we should fear, might prove tiresome if they were fictitious; but being true to the letter, we would do our part towards cherishing their memory, as one of the moral treasures of our race.
It was not from this benevolent captain alone that Matty experienced kindness. Wherever she needed it, it was extended to her. She arrived safely at Schenectady. Being much exhausted, she asked leave to remain for an hour in the canal-packet, after the passengers had left it. New arrangements were now to be made. She was to change her mode of travelling, and she dreaded going among the throng, and begging a passage in a rail-road car.
Her delicacy shrunk from this prolonged dependence, and she was half inclined to stop where she was, and seek employment. But her strength was inadequate to
[p. 89]
labour, “and surely,” she thought; “experience should teach me faith in my fellow-beings, and trust in Him who hath helped me thus far!” She resolved to proceed; when a person, who, like her, was lingering in the packet, asked her if she would like to look at a “New York paper?”
“Thank you—no!” said Matty; who had no very keen appetite for newspapers.
“But there is something quite awful and interesting there,” pursued the person, pointing to a heading,
“Farther Disclosures.”
Matty took it languidly; but so she did not read, what follows. “A second examination took place yesterday, of Angelica, alias Nancy Foot. She declared that she had not had any special altercation with Gore on the fatal night; nor since the previous morning, when the robbery first got wind. He had shared the money with her, believing it was, as she assured him, her savings from various largesses. It seems that the unfortunate youth, though deeply depraved, was struck with horror at the imputation of having robbed his own father. He said to Nancy, when he heard the police were in search of him, ‘It was well there was no hell hereafter; there was enough of it here!’ It seems more than probable, that his disbelief in a final retribution, concurring with his present degradation and alarm, impelled him to the horrible act of suicide.”
Matty read no farther; the paper dropped from her
[p. 90]
hands; she fainted and fell on the floor! The person who gave her the paper had left the cabin. “O! mother has died too!” screamed Sybil, and the little boy cried piteously. At this moment an old man entered the cabin door, and when Matty opened her eyes she found herself in her father's arms.
----------
John Gore has returned to his old home in Fairtown. The waxed table, the old clock, and the Bible are in their accustomed places. But the Bible no longer seems to Gore a mere piece of furniture. He reads it daily, and with the earnest and humble mind befitting him who knows he reads the oracles of the living God. He has but one sorrow, yet that admits no cure; and he never speaks of it. He lives in close friendship with the Milnors, “not having yet forgiven them,” he says, with a smile; “but having been forgiven by them!”
Matty now only shows she has suffered by her ready and deep sympathy with all who suffer. Her losses on earth are her treasures in heaven. She is the solace of her old father; the guide and delight of her loving and good children; the example of all worth in her humble neighbourhood; and though “poor, she maketh many rich.”
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Matty Gore
Subject
The topic of the resource
Christian faith and the misfortunes that result from neglect of religion.
Description
An account of the resource
A young woman's Christian faith sustains her through life's trials, while her father's and brother's lack of faith and duty lead to unhappiness and tragedy.
Creator
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Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [Miss C. E. Sedgwick]
Source
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The Religious Souvenir, edited by Lydia Howard Sigourney, pp. 50-90.
Publisher
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New York: Scofield & Voorhies
Date
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1840 [pub. 1839]
Contributor
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D. Gussman
Relation
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Annual reissued as The Religious Souvenir. Hartford, Conn.: S. Andrus and Son, 1846.
Language
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English
Type
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Document
"Despondency Corrected"
1839
1840
bible
brothers
Buffalo
conversion
correspondence
daughters
Death
duty
Faith
farming
fathers
filial obedience
forgiveness
Frances Wright
frontier
God
housekeeping
illness
independence
lectures
letters
living in sin
Lydia Howard Sigourney
marriage
New York City
newspapers
parenthood
railroad
religion
robbery
suicide
The Religious Souvenir
William Wordsworth
women's rights
-
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0c1e03630cda1b6a2a27e28a456baa67
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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1829
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories published in 1829.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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The Good Son.
Mr. William Smith was a respectable merchant in Boston. He had two children, William and Mary; whom he used, in sport, to call his little King and Queen, after William and Mary, who once reigned in England.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Smith were wise and good people; and though they were very rich, and had but these two children, they were not treated with any improper indulgence, for having but two, Mr. Smith said, he could not afford to spoil them. Mr. Smith was engaged in extensive business; his property was, of course, at risk. After a long run of prosperity, he met with severe losses, and a failure was the consequence. He had so carefully managed his affairs, that he found, by giving up all his property, he could pay all his debts. He did not hesitate. His beautiful house in town— his country-seat— all his furniture— his horses and carriages, and every luxury that had been suitable to his prosperity, was disposed of. He determined again to enter into business; and in order to do this, he found it necessary to go to Europe, to remain for two or three years.
It was decided that Mrs. Smith should, in the mean time, go with her children to a neat cottage in Brookline, where they might live with great economy, till Mr. Smith’s return. William had been for a year at one of the best, and of course, most expensive schools in the country; and Mr. Smith deeply regretted the necessity of withdrawing him from it. William’s term at school was to expire on the last day of September. Mr. Smith was to sail for Europe on the previous 15th; consequently he did not expect to see his boy again. On the evening of the 14th, he was sitting in his rocking chair, looking in the fire, and seeming very sad, when little Mary took his hand, and said, “Do not let us be so dismal yet, father— you don’t go till to-morrow.”
“Ah, my dear Mary, you are at a happy age; you cannot realize any evil that will not come till to-morrow.”
“But I can realize good, papa, that will not come till a great many to-morrows are past. I am all the time thinking how happy we shall be when you get home again, and we are back in our own house, and Willie is here, and you call us your King and Queen again.”
But her father was too melancholy to be cheered even by that sweetest music to a parent’s ear— the happy tones of his child’s voice; he threw his handkerchief over his face, and remained silent. Little Mary placed her bench beside him, and sat down close to him, took his hand, and laid her smooth, warm cheek on it. After they had continued thus for some minutes, her father seemed to feel her tenderness, he removed the handkerchief from his face, took her on his knee, and kissing her, exclaimed, “Oh, my dear children, if it were not for you I could bear my misfortunes like a man !” At this moment, Mrs. Smith entered the parlor with a letter in her hand, and gave it to her husband. “I cannot read letters now,” he said, and threw the packet on the table—“Then I will read it to you,” replied his wife. “It is from Mr. Norton; and I believe contains one from William.” Mr. Norton was William’s teacher, and a particular friend of Mr. Smith. Mrs. Smith read aloud his letter, which was as follows:
“My dear friend, I enclose you a letter from our boy, which I have with difficulty persuaded him to write—like most boys, his tongue moves much more readily than his pen; and besides, I believe on this occasion he felt a little modesty, on the score of being the hero of his own tale—you will perceive that I kept from him as long as I could the news of your misfortune. He is a noble boy, my dear friend; and I am sure you must think the loss of fortune not worth minding, while heaven spares you such a child—you must not take him from me; I shall stand father to him in your absence. It will cost me little to supply all his wants; as freely as I give, so freely would I receive, if my child needed your kindness. William is an honor to my school—I cannot spare him. Never have I known a boy, of ten years of age, make such progress. God grant you a prosperous voyage, and safe return.
Yours very sincerely,
R. Norton
“There, Father, now you really smile, for all you are going tomorrow,” said little Mary.
“I have reason to smile, indeed, my dear child,” replied her father; “but now let us see what William says; poor little god, he is no great letter writer.” Mrs. Smith opened his letter, and taking from it a small roll in a white paper, she laid it on the table and proceeded to read as follows—but before giving the letter, we must beg our readers not to expect an elegant epistle. Writing a letter is a great task to most boys; and William disliked it as much as any child I ever knew. I have seen him sit for half an hour, biting his pen, and knitting his brow, and looking in deep distress, — when if he had only let his pen tell what his tongue would have spoken, he would have written a very agreeable letter, without any trouble. On this occasion however, he had a good deal to say, and the letter was written with much more ease than usual; so that on the whole this is rather a favorable specimen of his composition. But here it is, to speak for itself:
“Dear Father, — I am well, and very happy; and so I hope are Mother and Queen Mary; at least, I am very happy, only when I am thinking about your going so far away; but I have not much time for that, — I have so many lessons to get. When I go to bed I always think of you, and I should then feel very unhappy, but I fall to sleep so quick— I am sure it is not because I may tell you that I get on famously in all my studies, except my Latin, and I do tolerably well in that. I really do try, but it is awful hard; I think Greek would be easier. I am glad Mary is a girl, because she wont have to be plagued with learning Latin. Mr. Norton is very, very kind to me; and if you were not my father, I believe I should love him as well as I do you. I felt very bad when I heard you had sold our house and all of the furniture, though I could not think of any thing in particular that I cared much about, but the picture of Burgoyne’s surrender, and my crickets, that we used to call our thrones, and sit upon every evening, each side of Mother, while she told us a story. Oh, what good times we had! As soon as I grow up, I am determined to buy the picture back again, on account of grandfather’s having been at the battle of Saratoga, and having told me all about it.”
It was evident William had proceeded thus far very glibly; but here it appeared he had stopped, — had got his pen mended, — and had started again with more difficulty.
“My dear father, I have been thinking a very long time how I shall ask you to accept some money from me, but Mr. Norton says it in time my letter was finished, — and so I have written it plain out. It seems so strange for me, who have always had presents from you, to give you any thing. I never knew before how pleasant it was to give; I should think every body would give away all they had to spare. Mr. Norton says I must tell you how I came by my money. It is just two months since he told me you had failed; and explained to me what failing was. I cried a great deal; not because we should not be rich any more, — for I don’t care a fig about that; but Mr. Norton told me you were afraid you should not be able to pay your debts, and that I knew was dreadful; for you have talked to me so much about the shame of contracting debts which could not be paid, that I knew how you would feel. It seemed to me that I could bear any thing better than the thought of you having to be ashamed; and so when I went to bed, I lay awake till I hit on my plan— and, the next morning, I asked Mr. Norton if he did not want somebody to do Steve Summer’s work in the garden. Steve ran away last week, and went to sea. Mr. Norton said he did; and he did not know where to look for another boy. Then I asked him if he would hire me; Mr. Norton laughed and said he was afraid I could not do the work. ‘But, Sir,’ says I, ‘wont you please to let me try?’ ‘Why what do you want to work for? Says he. So I had to tell him that I wanted to help you pay your debts, father— then he stroked my head, and I thought he was going to consent; but he said you have a great many hard lessons to get, William; and all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. ‘ But, I told him, if it made Jack a dull boy, it should not make one of Will; and besides, I would call it my play and that would do just as well; and then he was so kind as to say he would hire me, if I would take my play-time, and would not slight any of my lessons.
From the first, I could weed full as well as Steve; but the hoeing was pretty hard, — and the first week I blistered my hands; but I did not let any body know it, and they soon hardened; and now they are worth something, I can tell you, father. At first, Bob Shaw and Sam Rogers were mad, because I would not go and play with them as usual; and once they called me ‘grub-worm,’ and made fun of me. Mr. Norton overheard them, and he told them what I was working for, and then they both came to me, and said they were very sorry; and ever since they help me, so that I can get done in time to play a little. They are capital fellows; and I hope their fathers will fail, so I can pay them for it. Mr. Norton says I must tell you that I have fairly earned the ten dollars, — that he should have been obliged to pay it to somebody else, if he had not to me; and he says I must tell you, I am a much neater workman than Steve. I hope you wont think I mean to brag father. It was very lucky for me, that it was summer time, because wages are at the highest then. I wonder people don’t always prefer to work in the summer, on that account.
I should like, sir, if you please, that you should pay Mr. Reed’s bill out of this money; because he has given me many a ride in his milk-cart, and because of poor little Harry Reed; for you know when he comes from the deaf and dumb asylum, Mr. Reed means to have him learn to paint, if he can afford it; but he says it costs a ‘master sight,’— I suppose he means a large sum of money. Oh! I am very glad now, that the meeting house Harry drew for me was not framed, for then you would have to sell it. I am afraid, my dear father, you wont have time to read this long letter— if you have not, you can take it, and read it on board ship, where, I suppose, you will have plenty of leisure, I did not know that I could write such a long letter. Give my love to dear mother, and queen Mary; and tell Mary that I am very glad she is going to have a garden at Brookline; for now I can advise her about it, and work in it too, — that is, when I am at home. My dear father, I shall try to do my duty, when you are gone; and every morning and every night, I shall pray to God to bless you. I used to forget my prayers sometimes, when I was a little boy; but now I never forget them, — how can I, when I have so much to ask of my Heavenly Father? After all, it is not so very hard to write a letter, when you have plenty to say. Good Bye, my dear, dear father.
Your ever affectionate son,
William Smith, Junior
Postscript. I don’t mean that I shall be glad to have the boys’ fathers fail; but if they do, I shall be glad to help them.
- W.S., Jr.
It may seem strange to some of our readers, who have never shed any tears but the tears of sorrow, that William’s letter should have drawn tears from his father’s and mother’s eyes; but they will find, by and by, that the happiest feelings they ever have, will make them weep. The first words that Mr. Smith uttered were, “Thank God! – thank God! — My boy is a treasure— worth all– and ten times all that I have lost— I said that if it were not for my children, I could bear my misfortunes like a man— I now feel, that with such children, I can bear any thing.” Mrs. Smith said nothing but she laid her head on little Mary’s shoulder, who had jumped into her lap while she was reading the letter, and, from her heart, she offered a silent thanksgiving to God, for the virtuous conduct of her boy.
Mr. Smith had paid all his debts when he received William’s present, and he determined, at once, that the money should be devoted to Harry Reed’s benefit; accordingly, he placed it to his account in the savings bank.
Oh! If children could look into their parents’ hearts, and see the sweet emotions, the delightful feelings, their good conduct produces, then, I think, they would be more earnest to improve every opportunity to do well.
In the next number of the Miscellany, we shall give some account of little Mary; and we hope to show, that she deserved her royal title as well as her brother— and to show, moreover, that there are other ways of doing good, than by bestowing money; though the virtuous poor envy the rich, that privilege, more, perhaps, than any other they possess.
Stockbridge. S.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Good Son
Subject
The topic of the resource
Financial loss, filial piety, the value of physical labor.
Description
An account of the resource
After a father's financial loss, his young son secretly works as a gardener while at boarding school to help earn money for his family.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Juvenile Miscellany [edited by Lydia Maria Child] (January 1829): 217-29.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1829
Contributor
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Hannah L. Drew, L. Damon-Bach, D. Gussman
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1829
boys
Brookline
deafness
fathers
filial piety
financial loss
gardening
God
Juvenile fiction
Juvenile Miscellany
King William III
letter writing
letters
Lydia Maria Child
muteness
Queen Mary II
Saratoga
sons
Surrender of General Burgoyne
virtue
virtuous poor
-
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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1847
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
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“Truth Versus Fiction.”
________
By Miss C. M. Sedgwick.
________
[p. 1]
“Are you writing for the December number of the Columbian Magazine?” asked a certain dear friend of mine, who came into my room just as I was sitting down to my desk yesterday.
“Yes, I shall begin this morning, if you do not prevent me.”
“Don’t flare up, my dear; I have no intention of preventing or hindering you. Have you a subject?”
“Yes; I was thinking of founding a little story upon the remarkable exploit of our village amazons the other day, but if you have anything better to suggest, my alms-basket is at your feet; I shall be grateful to you for any aid to my invention.”
“I do not expect your gratitude. I know there are no people more tenacious of the old proverb, “many hands spoil the broth,” than you writers. I was about—very modestly—to make a suggestion. You are going to write a story for the magazine; the country is drugged with stories.”
“No more of that, ‘if you love me, Hal.’”
My friend proceeded: “Suppose you abandon fiction for once.”
“Why—my story is founded on fact.”
“Rather a small foundation,” interposed one of those fair young amazons, whose brave deeds I would fain have illustrated. “Your foundations are like city lots; so narrow that you are compelled to run your structure far up into the air.”
“I have, at least, one advantage,” I replied. “This sort of structure does not betray its want of solidity.”
“Perhaps not,” resumed my friend, “but the unreality weakens the impression; so soon as an article is found to be ‘a leetle mixed,’ to borrow our Western friend’s expression, the adulterating matter violates the whole. But to come to the point, it seems to me that at this closing and solemn season of the year, it would be well to intersperse the stories of a magazine with something better adapted to the December of our lives.”
“But will our public take broth and biscuit, when all sorts of piquant preparations are got up for them by the cunning artistes of such works?”
“Try them. The late Mathew Carey, himself a doer of good, proposed that records of virtue in private life should be made. Such records might do something in this imitative world to stimulate the zeal of profitable emulation, or at least to awaken our confidence and hope in humanity. Pardon me if I repeat that however strong the assurance may be of a fact foundation, there is always uncertainty attached to a fictitious narrative. I speak for myself; on my mind there is all the difference in the effect of a real and an imaginary character that there is in the landscape of this morning—distinct, clear and defined in this brilliant sunshine—and that of yesterday, exaggerated and dimmed by the floating mist.”
I sighed over my craft, but I could not but acknowledge that there was justice in my friend’s criticism. My thoughts turned to those tenants of our new made graves to whom he had alluded; persons of no eventful history nor very marked character, but whose example, for that very reason, might better harmonize with general experience. They were hidden in their lowly estate and, like the lakes deep set in the bosom of our hills, they were a serene mirror of Heaven. And now that with the leafy veil that shrouded these, their natural types, their veil of life has fallen, it is fitting
[p. 2]
that the beam of their pure lives should extend beyond the very narrow limit of their mortal career.
The brilliant examples of those eminent men and women, whose biographies are trumpeted through the world, are not adapted to the every day’s wants of a medium condition. What have the wives of our American citizens, or those of our village artizans and country farmers, in common with Madame de Stael, Madame de Genlis, the mistresses of Louis Fourteenth, or even the “eminent women of England?”
Our home productions are better suited for our home market, and we believe there are women in our towns and villages whose domestic, unconscious virtues, not elicited or set off by uncommon circumstances, would be far more edifying to the million than the blazonry of great real names, or the possible perfection of imaginary characters. But the true story must be told, and this remains to be done by some master hand. Our humbler task is to record a few traits in the characters of two of our village maidens who have fallen with the falling year.
Harriet Gale was known among her own set as a quiet, kind-hearted, industrious girl, who performed her duties well and said nothing about them. They were to her the allotted work of life and she did them cheerfully, without any apparent thought of difficulty in the task or merit in its accomplishment. Two or three years since she was invited to live with a sister who was well established somewhere in the vast West.
She found a happy and exciting home there and was delighted with her improved condition. It must be confessed that our emigrants from New England, in their earnest struggle for the good things of this life, sometimes forget the commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother.” Their thoughts are on their fair fresh fields, standing thick with corn, and they do not, like Joseph, remember the old man whom they may have left straitened at home. Our friend Harriet did remember him. Her father is aged, and hearing that her presence and filial ministry were becoming important to him, she did not hesitate for a moment to sacrifice her agreeable position to his comfort and, “true to the kindred points of Heaven and home,” she returned to him.
There is too little sympathy between youth and age; it is difficult to make activity and repose harmonize. The stream of love and care, sacrifice and benefaction, naturally runs down from parent to child, and to this order of nature the parent’s love is generally adequate. But when, as sometimes toward the close of life, the stream is to be turned and the child is to minister to the parent, the exigence requires an extraordinary virtue in both. The child’s mid-day must be somewhat dimmed, if not obscured—the parent’s chill twilight must be warmed and brightened—each must conform to the other.
“I thought it a privilege,” said Harriet to me, when first I made her acquaintance a few weeks before her death, “to come home and do what I could for father.”
“Father is always kind and always cheerful--he never lets anything worry him, come what will, and he has had enough to make other men disappointed and fractious--poor old man! I am afraid he will miss me! I said to him this morning, father, I don’t know who will keep your accounts and mend your pens when I am gone.”
“He did not answer me. He could not; but he will give up. I know he will—he is used to it!”
Here was no exaggeration of her importance—no selfish or egotistic fear that she should be forgotten.
Harriet had a step-mother, a name that is for the most part a signal for the revolt of the affections—a relation that enlists all the mean jealousies, selfishnesses and asperities that beset domestic life, and in truth is so involved in difficulties that few seem to think it worth while to struggle against its tendencies.
“It seems,” said Miss Gale to me, with a sweet smile, “when mother (her step-mother) enters into that door as if an angel entered my room. She has made this room seem to me like the gates of Paradise. I have many kind hands to smooth my pillow, but there is no hand like mother’s!”
I would abstain from the published praise of living worth, but I cannot forbear saying that there must have been an equal fidelity in both parties to make this happiness. God’s servants are the only true alchymists—they alone turn the baser metals to gold.
There are few of the relations of life that produce the happiness of which He who “set the solitary in families” has made them capable. How many barrels or half tilled fields are there in domestic life. We cease to wonder at the abuses of the conjugal relation—that relation most beset with difficulties and most liable to abuse—when we see parents and children, brothers and sisters, fail to reap the golden harvest of which their Heavenly Father has sown their fields at broad cast.
I saw Harriet Gale when she was fast sinking away with consumption. She was so cheerful and manifested so hearty an interest in all the village concerns, that I took it for granted that, like many persons in that disease, she was deluded as to its progress, and I was taken by surprise when our kind village dress-maker having sent her word she was prevented coming to watch with her, by some fancy dresses which must be finished for a fancy ball to be given on the next evening (the 4th of July), she said, “Well, I don’t envy them; death
[3]
looks pleasanter to me than life ever did. I have enjoyed living too!” she added, with a sweet smile.
How few there are who on such an occasion would not have indulged in some lamentation over the frivolity of the world, in which, alas! for poor human nature, a drop of pharisaical self-complacency would have mingled. Harriet Gale’s pure spirit was like those healthy atmospheres that disinfect whatever they embrace.
It was on the same eve of our festival of independence that, raising her feeble head and looking through the window at the stars, she said, “It is a clear night and I think we shall have a pleasant day to-morrow. I hope so, for it is a pity to have so many people disappointed.”
Such cheerful and gentle sympathies are rarely felt in the midst of suffering (Miss Gale’s was extreme at this time), and they are therefore more impressive than strong and bold, expressions of religious triumph.
She used no threadbare phrases to express her feelings, nor seemed for a moment to think there was anything unusual about them. Her face and tones were uniformly quiet and cheerful. She said to me with her habitual and never to be forgotten smile, “My happiest hours have been in this room!”
“But you have suffered here extremely,” I replied.
“Yes,” she answered, “but god is good, and if it were better that I should be removed with less suffering, I certainly should be.”
Harriet Gale had been from her early youth a member of the Methodist church; and her familiar friends looked upon her death but as the fitting conclusion to the Christian fidelity of her life.
Those strangers who were admitted to the privilege of seeing her in the last extremity, for the first time, saw how it was that the sting of death was taken away, and heard, mingling with her sweet tones, ‘It is I--be not afraid.’
‘The Lord taketh pleasure in his people. He will beautify the meek with salvation.’
________
It is but two Sundays since the body of another of these meek servants of their Lord was reverently borne into our beautiful little church and set down before the chancel, while her pastor interpreted the occasion to our hearts and held before us the instruction of her life and the consolation of her death.
She had endured a life-time of invalidism by bending like a reed before the relentless blast. For many years she had supported herself and contributed to the support of her family with her needle, and by doing, that worst paid of all labor, plain sewing. To “stitch, stitch, stitch,” was the business of her life, and it was done with such fidelity and completeness that her employers became her friends. She never brought reproach or self-reproach upon herself by unpunctuality. Her work when done was well done; so well that I believe it would be difficult to estimate the amount of comfort she has produced by her humble ministry. No seam of hers ripped, no button came off, no string was wanting. Thus a world of petty vexation was saved—a world of that chafing and fretting that makes up so much of the friction of life.
She was free from an infirmity very common among our people who, while they sell their services, soothe their pride, wounded by the implied inferiority, by telling you, with no thought of abating the money compensation but making a little more than the thing is worth, that they will do it to oblige you. Thus ‘to accommodate you’ you are permitted to board in a family at the highest price going, you have the ‘privilege’ of hiring a horse, or buying a turkey, or purely to oblige you, your sewing is done. Our friend was quite above this sort of cant. She wanted employment and she was grateful for it, and so the relation between her and her employer had its reciprocal blessing.
She knew the value of her moderate gains. They secured to her independence and gave a comfortable aspect to her family. Some years ago the price of sewing in our village was considerably advanced and it was recommended to her to raise her prices. “No,” she said, “I am quite satisfied with the provision my good God has made for me.”
Her pale face and attenuated form told the story of her life of bodily suffering, but that pale face was lighted up with contentment, patience, and cheerfulness, so that to her seemed already accomplished the promise to the faithful, ‘They shall be like Him for they shall see Him as He is.’ She saw her Father in her God.
Not long before her death a subscription paper was offered to her for money to adorn our burial pace. She cheerfully rose on her bed and wrote her name for the last time, saying, “It is pleasant for me to think that I shall be laid to rest in that beautiful place.”
Her life so gradually and gently faded away that neither she nor her friends were aware of the diminution of her light till it was nearly extinct. Then, when a loving and devoted sister told her she had not many hours to live, she asked to be left for a little while to herself. And when that sacred communion, which words could but imperfectly have interpreted, was over, she sang with a low but sustained voice a part of the hymn beginning
Could I but read my title clear
To mansions in the skies.
“How beautiful it is to die,” she said, and while the words were passing from her lips her soul
[p. 4]
realized its holy vision and passed from the dead body to eternal life.
So lived with sweet patience and so died with sublime faith our village seamstress--Harriet Greenleaf.
“Around thy earthly tomb let roses rise, an everlasting Spring, in memory of that delightful fragrance which was once from thy mild manners quietly exhaled.”
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Truth Versus Fiction
Subject
The topic of the resource
Heroism and virtue in everyday life.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator is encouraged to abandon fiction and to write about real life, and tells the stories of two village women who passed in the previous year.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Columbian Magazine, [edited by John Inman and Robert A. West] Vol. 7 (January 1847): 1-4.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1847
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Charlene Avallone, L. Damon-Bach, D. Gussman
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1847
4th of July
Consumption
daughters
Death
domesticity
fathers
fiction
filial duty
God
humility
invalid
labor
Louis XIV
Madame de Genlis
Madame de Stael
Mathew Carey
Methodist
New England
non-fiction
sewing
step-mother
submission
suffering
Ten Commandments
The Columbian Magazine
virtue
West
-
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b994c2435d4abe172fcb67bb2b97d2e8
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
1856
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document.
THE WHITE HILLS IN OCTOBER
[p. 44]
OUR town friends who fly from the heat, and dust, and menacing diseases, and insupportable ennui of their city residence, during the moths of July and August, may have an escape, but they have little enjoyment. We admire the heroism with which they endure, year after year, the discomforts of a country hotel, or the packing in the narrow, half-furnished bedrooms and rather warm attics of rural lodging-houses, and the general abatement and contraction of creature-comforts, in such startling contrast to the abounding luxuries of their own city palaces. But they are right; the country, at any discount, is better, in the fearful heats of July and August, than the town with its hot, unquiet nights and polluted air. Any hillside or valley in the country, and a shelter under any roof in or upon them, with the broad cope of heaven above, (not cut into patches and fragments by intervening walls and chimney-tops,) and broad fields, and grass, and corn, and woodlands, and their flowers, and freshening dews and breezes, and all Nature’s infinite variety, is better than every appliance and contrivance for battling with the din, the suffocation, and unrest of city life.
Yes, our city friends are right in their summer flights from
“The street,
Filled with its ever-shifting train.”
But they must not flatter themselves that their mere glimpse of country life, their mere snatch at its mid-summer beauty, the one free-drawn breath of their wearied spirit, is acquaintance with it. As well might one who had seen Rosalind, the most versatile of Shakspeare’s heroines, only in her court-dress at her uncle, the duke’s ball, guess at her infinite variety of charm in the Forest of Ardennes. Nature holds her drawing-room in July and August. She wears her fullest and richest dresses then; if we may speak flippantly without offense to the simplicity of her majesty, she is then en pleine toilette. But any other of the twelve is more picturesque than the summer months. Blustering March, with its gushing streams tossing off their icy fetters—changeful April, with its greening fields and glancing birds—sweet, budding, blossoming May—flowery June—fruitful September—golden, glorious October—dreary, thoughtful November; and all of winter, with its potent majesty and heroic adversity.
But let our citizens come to our rural districts—the more, the better for them! Only let them not imagine they get that enough which is “as good as a feast.”
This preamble was naturally suggested by our autumnal life in the country, and by a recurrence to a late delightful passage through the White Hills of New-Hampshire.
“That resort of people that do pass
In travel to and fro,”
during the intense months of July and August, we found in October so free from visitors, that we might have fancied ourselves the discoverers of that upland region of beauty, unparalleled, so far as we know, in all the traveled parts of our country. And for the benefit of those who shall come after us, for all who have their highest enjoyment, perhaps their best instruction, in Nature’s Free School, we intended to give some brief notices of our tour, in the hope of extending the traveling season into October by imparting some faint idea of the startling beauty of this brilliant month in the mountains; but what we might have said was happily superseded.
At a little inn, in a small town, after we came down from the “high place,” we met a party of friends who had preceded us along the whole route by a day.
A rain came on, and we were detained together for twenty-four hours. We agreed to pass the evening in a reciprocal reading of the brief notes of our journey. It came last to the turn of my friend, a very charming young person, whom I shall take the liberty to call Mary Langdon. She blushed and stammered, and protested against being a party to the contribution. “My only record of the journey,” she said, “is a long letter to my cousin, which I began before we left home.”
“So much the better,” we rejoined.
“But,” she said, “ it has been written capriciously, in every mood of feeling.”
“Therefore,” we urged, “the more variety.”
At last, driven to the wall, she threw a nice morocco letter-case into my lap, saying: “Take it and read it to yourself, and you will see why I positively can not read it aloud.”
So we gave up our entreaties. I read the letter-journal after I went to my room. The reading cheated me of an hour’s sleep—perhaps because I had just intensely enjoyed the country my friend described; and in the morning I begged Miss Langdon’s permission to publish it. She at first vehemently objected, saying it would be in the highest degree indelicate to publish so much of her own story as was inextricably interwoven with the journey.
“But, dear child,” I urged, “who that reads our magazines knows you? You will be on the other side of the Atlantic in another month, and before you return this record will be forgotten, for alas! we contributors to monthlies do not write for immortality!”
“But for the briefest mortality I am not fitted
[p. 45]
to write,” she pleaded. I rather smiled at the novelty of one hesitating to write for the public because not fitted for the task, and (thinking of “the fools that rushed in”—there is small aptness in the remainder of the familiar quotation) I continued to urge, till my young friend yielded, on my promising to omit passages which related to the private history of her heart—Mary Langdon not partaking that incomprehensible frankness or child-like hallucination which enables some of our very best writers, Mrs. Browning, for instance, to impart, by sonnets and in various vehicles of prose and verse, to the curious and all-devouring public those secrets from the heart’s holy of holies that common mortals would hardly confess to a lover—or a priest.
It is to our purpose, writing, as we profess to do pour l’utile, that our young friend indulged little in sentiment, and that, being a country-bred New-England girl, she conscientiously set down the coarser realities essential to the well-being of a traveler—breakfasts, dinners, etc.
But before proceeding to her journal, I must introduce my débutante, if she who will probably make but a single appearance before the public may be so styled.
Mary Langdon is still on the threshold of life—at least those who have reached threescore would deem her so, as she is not more than three-and-twenty. The freshness of her youth has been preserved by a simple and rather retired country-life. A total abstinence from French novels and other like reading has left the purity and candor of her youth unscathed by their blight and weather-stain. Would that this tree of the knowledge of evil—not good and evil--were never transplanted into our New World! Beware, ye that eat of it; your love of what is natural and simple will surely die.
Mary Langdon’s simplicity is that of truth, not of ignorance. Her father has given her what he calls “a good education”—that means, he says, that “she thoroughly knows how to read, write, and cipher, which,” he rather tartly adds, “few girls brought up at French boarding-schools do.” As might be suspected from the practical ideas in her narrative, our young friend has had that complete development of her faculties which arises out of the necessities of country-life in its best aspects.
Mary Langdon is called only pretty, but her prettiness is beauty in the eyes of her friends and lovers; and then she is so buoyant, so free of step and frank of speech, that while others are slowly winding their way to your affection, she springs into your heart.
With due respect to seniority, we should have presented Mr. Langdon before his daughter. On being called on for his journal, he said he “ was not such a confounded fool as to keep one for any portion of his life.” He “should as soon think of crystallizing soap-bubbles. He had dotted down a few memoranda as warnings to future travelers, and we were welcome to them; though he thought we were too mountain mad to profit by them, if indeed any body ever profited by any body’s else experience!” The fact was, the dear old gentleman had left home in a very unquiet state of mind. He hated at all times leaving his home, abounding in comforts—he detested travel even under what he termed “alleviating circumstances.” He was rather addicted to growling. This English instinct came over with his progenitor in the May Flower, and half a dozen generations had not sufficed to subdue it. But Mr. Langdon’s “bark is worse than his bite.” In truth his ‘bite’ is like that of a teething child’s, resulting from a derangement of sweet and loving elements.
We found our old friend’s memoranda so strongly resembling the grumbling of our traveling cousins from over the water, that we concluded to print it so portions of it, in order to illustrating the effects of the lights or shadows that emanate from our own minds. Providence provides the banquet; its relish or disrelish depends on the appetite of the guest. But to Mary Langdon’s letter, which, as it was begun before she left home, bears its first date there:
“LAKE-SIDE, 28th Sept., 1854.
“MY DEAR SUE,--I have not much more to tell you than my last contained. Carl Hermann left our neighborhood last week, determined to return by the next steamer to Dusseldorf. We were both very wretched at this final parting. But as I have often seen people making great sacrifices to others, and then losing themselves, and letting others lose all the benefit of the sacrifice, by the ungracious manner of it, I summoned up courage, and appeared before my father calm and acquiescing, and (you will think me passionless, perhaps hard-hearted) I soon became so. I read over and over again your arguments, and I confess I was willing to be persuaded by them. But, after all, my point of sight is not yours, and you can not see objects in the proportions and relations that I do. You say I have exaggerated notions of filial duty—that I have come to mature age and ripe judgment, and that I should decide and act for myself—that in the nature of things the conjugal must supersede the filial relation, and that I have no right to sacrifice my life-long happiness to the remnant of my father’s days; and above all, I am foolish to give in to his prejudices, and—selfishness,’ you added, dear, and did not quite efface the word. Though I see there is much reason in what you say, I have only to reply that I can not marry with my father’s disapprobation. I can not and I will not. Our hearts have grown together. God forms the bond that ties the child to the parent, and we make the other; and it shows human work—being often fragile, sometimes rotten. Susy, you lost your parents when you were so young, that you can not tell what I feel for my surviving one. Since my mother’s death and the marriage of Alice, he has lived in such dependence on me, that I can’t tell what his life would be if I were to leave him: and I will not. You tell me this is unnatural, and a satisfactory proof to you that I do not love Carl. Oh, Sue!— ”
[pg. 46]
Here must be our first hiatus. We can only say that the outpouring of our young friend’s heart satisfied us that beneath her serene surface there was an unfathomable well of feeling, and that her friend must have been convinced that
“Love’s reason is not always without reason.”
The letter proceeds: “I very well know that my father is prejudiced, Sue, but old men’s prejudices become a part and parcel of themselves, and they can not be cured of them. My father’s do not spring from any drop of bitterness, for he has not one; nor from egotism, for he has none of it; but, as you know, his early life was in Boston, and his only society is there, and he he naturally partakes the opinions of his contemporaries, who, the few surviving among them, deem all foreigners interlopers, outside barbarians, strangers intermeddling with that liberty, equality, and pursuit of happiness which is their exclusive birth-right; or rather, I suspect, that in their secret souls they regard the theories of their revolutionary fathers as a Utopian dream. A foreign artist above all is, in my father’s eye, a mere vagrant, who neither deserves nor can attain a local habitation or a name; and thus my poor Carl, with divine gifts, and habits of industry that would make the fortune of a mere mechanic, is thrust aside.”
Here Mary Langdon begins the narration of her journey, and here we give notes, a few specimens from her father’s memoranda, that our readers may have the advantage of seeing the same objects from different points of sight, premising that our old friend’s memoranda were scanty, and repeating that we give but specimens. We smile at his petulance more in love than ridicule. We are not fond of showing it off, and only do so in these brief extracts to substantiate our opinion that his traveling temper showed him near of kin to English tourists, who seem to make it a point to turn their plates bottom side upward.
The father and daughter both record the same facts. The one shows the rights and beautiful side of the tapestry, the other the wrong one. Strange that any eye should make the fatal mistake of dwelling on the last rather than the first!
“On Monday, 2d of October,” proceeds Mary Langdon in her letter to her cousin, “we came into Boston, to take the two o’clock train for Portland. We had three hours upon our hands, which we pleasantly filled up by visits to a studio and picture-shop; and finally, our mortal part, having given out while we were feasting the immortal, we repaired to a restaurateur’s. We groped our way into a little back room in School Street, where, if we did not find luxury or elegance, we did what met our reasonable wants-- wholesome fare and civility.*…..
___________________________________
* EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL
2nd October, Anno Domino, 1854. Left my comfortable lowland home for unknown parts, and known regions of snow and ice. The Lord willing, I am sure of one pleasure—coming home again!
“We had three mortal house on our hands this morning in Boston. I called on my dear old friends, the survivors of the _____ family. Not one of them, they told me, has yet risked life in a rail-car. Wisdom is not extinct!
“Called on respected Widow A-----. Could not see much of Sally -----, my old sweetheart, about her; but we got upon old times, and the color came to her pale, furrowed cheek. Women never forget—loving souls! She gave me a nice lunch—pickled oysters, etc. and a glass of old Madeira. Meanwhile the girls were ranging round studios (?), good lack! and picture-shops. This rage for ‘Art” has come in with the foreign tongues since my time. Picked them up at a restaurant. What a misnomer! A dainty place of refreshment to be sure; a little parlor behind a shop, with herds rushing in and herds rushing out!
________________________________________
“The passage to Portland was dusty but brief, and we arrived there in time to see its beautiful harbor, while the water reflected the rose-tints on the twilight clouds. We, as advised, eschewed the hotel, and were kindly received at a Miss Jones’s, a single woman, who so blends dignity with graciousness, that she made us feel like invited guests. One might well mistake the reception of the hostess for the welcome of a friend. Her table has an American variety and abundance with the nicety of English appointments. Her house is a model. Its quiet and completeness reminds one of that classic type of comfort, an English inn. The house, with its high repute, was the inheritance of two sisters from their mother, of whom we were told an anecdote which may be apocryphal, but which would harmonize with the bonhomie of Sir Roger de Coverley. The old lady closed her patriarchal length of days serenely; and when she was dying, she requested that the order of her household should be in no wise disturbed by the event of her decease, but that ‘the gentlemen should play their evening game of whist as usual!’*…..
____________________________________
*EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“Came by rail to Portland, in peril of life and limb. Stirred up with fifty plebieans treading on your toes and jostling your elbows. This modern improvement of cattle-pens over a gentleman’s carriage with select and elect friends, and time to enjoy a beautiful country, is the ‘advance of civilization!’ Travelers now are prisoners under sentence of death- their keeper being called a conductor. Oh! I cry with my old friend Touchstone, ‘when I was at home, I was in a better place!’ Heaven grant me his philosophy to add, “Travelers must be content.’
“Portland. Rather a nice house is this Miss Jones’s. Old-fashioned neatness and quiet. But what would our English traveler say to the lady bestowing her own company, unasked, and that of her guest, upon us! Bad butter spoiled my tea and breakfast. The girls did not notice it. Young folks have no senses.”
_________________________________________
“Tuesday. Miss Jones’s morning face was as benign as her evening countenance. No lady could have administered hospitality with more refinement. Just as the door of the carriage that was to convey us to the station was closing, it was reopened, and a rough-hewn, but decent country body was shoved in by the driver, who muttered something about there being no other conveyance for her. My father looked a little awry, not with any thought of remonstrating -- no native American would do that -- but he was just lighting his after-breakfast cigar, and he shrunk from the impropriety of smoking in such close quarters with a stranger who bore a sem-
[pg. 47]
blance of the sex to which he always pays deference.
“‘I hope, Madam,’ he said, ‘a cigar does not offend you?’
“ ‘La! no, sir,’ replied our rustic friend good-naturedly, ‘ I like it.’
“My father’s geniality is always called forth by the touch of a cigar.
“ ‘Perhaps, Madame,’ he said, with a smile at the corners of his mouth, ‘you would try one yourself?’
“ ‘I would,’ she answered, eagerly, and grasped the cigar my father selected, saying, ‘thank ye kindly. I s’pose I can light it at the end of yours?
“ My dear, fastidious father heroically breasted this juxtaposition, and the old lady, unconscious of any thing but her keen enjoyment of the unlooked-for been, smoked away vigorously. Dear Alice, who never loses sight of her duty to wrest a possible mischance from any human being, rather verdantly suggested, ‘that the cigar might make her sick.’
“‘Mercy, child! I am used to pipes.’
“That I had already inferred from her manner of holding the cigar. She was soon pressed by the usual necessity engendered by smoking, and half rising from her seat, it was too evident that she mistook the pure plate-glass for empty space. My father let down the glass as if he had been shot; but she, nowise discomposed, even by our laughing, merely said, cooly
“ ‘Why, I did not calculate right, did I?”
“There are idiosyncrasies in Yankeedom—there is no doubt of it! Arrived at the cars, our close companionship, and our acquaintance too, ended, except that the woman’s husband, for she had a husband, some Touchstone whose ‘humor’ it was to ‘take that no other man would,’ asked me to put my window down, for his ‘wife was sick!’ But as I had just observed the good woman munching a bit of mince pie, I thought that coming so close upon the cigar might possibly offend her stomach more than the fresh untainted air, so I declined, as courteously as possible, with the answer I have always ready for similar requests, ‘that I keep my window open to preserve the lives of the people in the car.’ ‘That’s peculiar!’ I heard her murmur; but her serenity was nowise discomposed, either by my refusal or her ‘sickness.’ Surely the imperturbable good nature of our people is national and ‘peculiar!’*…..
___________________________________
*EXTRACT FROM MR.LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“Happy illustration, from a smoking old woman this morning, of the refinements of railroad travel!”
________________________________________
“By the way, there were notices posted up in these cars, which reminded us that we were near the English Provinces, and under their influence. The notices ran thus: ‘Gentlemen are requested not to put their feet on the cushions, and not to spit on the floor, and to maintain a respectable cleanliness, the conductors are required to enforce these requests.’ Must we wait for the millennium to see a like request and like enforcement pervade our tobacco-chewing country? We found ourselves surrounded by intelligent people of the country habitués, who gave us all the local information we asked, told us when we came to Bryant’s Pond, and that the poor little shrunken stream, that still brawled and fretted in its narrowed channel, was the Androscoggin.
“At Gorham, but seven miles from the ‘Glen-House,’ we left the cars and found a wagon awaiting passengers. ‘The houses are all closed,’ was the pleasant technical announcement of our driver; and he added, cheerfully,
“’The weather has been so tedious that it was burst the bubble on Mount Washington.’
“‘The “bubble!” what the deuce does the man mean?’ exclaimed my father. I perceived that it was a bit of slang wit upon ‘out-of-season’ people, to terrify them with the ‘bulb’ having burst, and so I told my father. He solemnly replied that he did not in the least doubt the fact! And as we went on slowly making the ascent, he looked ‘sagely sad;’ dear Alice, as her happy temper is, was ‘bright without the sun.’*…..
“My father made a few and faint responses to our exclamations of delight at the light wreath of mist that floated far down the mountains, and the massive clouds that dropped over their summits, so that our imaginations were not kept in abeyance by definite outlines. The air was soft, and our steeds, as if considerate of our enjoyment, prolonged it by crawling up the long ascent. We came into the ‘Glen House’ with keen appetites—a needful blessing we thought—when Mr. Thompson, the host, with solemn mien informed us he ‘was not prepared for company in October—we must expect port and beans.’ł …..
________________________________________
*EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“We were pitched into an open wagon at Gorham—Scottish mist—rain impending—chilled to my very vitals. The driver tells us the bulb’s already burst on Mount Washington. Continuous ascent. Not a meadow, an orehard, or a garden, but dreary mountains shrouded in fog.
ł “Found the Glen House ‘closed,’ which means that all the comfortable rooms are dismantled and shut up, that you must take such fare as mine host pleases (‘pork and beans’ he promises), thank him for ‘accommodating’ you, and pay summer prices. Oh, ‘what fools we mortals are!”
__________________________________________
“Oh, my poor father’s blank face! Yet blanker when we were ushered into a parlor where, instead of the cracking wood fire we had fancied indigenous in these mountains, we found one of those black ‘demons’ that have taken out of our life all the poetry of the ‘hearthstone.’ But courage! We can open the stove door and get a sparkle of light and life!
“10 p.m. Before finishing my day’s journal I must tell you, ‘pour encourager les autres’ who may risk the ‘closed houses’ of October, that our host did better than he promised. Our dinner was served in a cozy little room, as neatly as a home dinner; it was hot, which a hotel dinner, in the season, never is; and that the threatened ‘pork and beans’ turned into tender fowls, fresh eggs, and plentiful accessories of vegetables and pies. William, our wagon-driv-
[pg. 48]
er, was metamorphosed into a waiter, and performed his part as if he were ‘native to the manner.’*…..
__________________________________________
*EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“Dinner turned out better than I expected; but where but in a Yankee tavern would one suffer the infliction of a mince pie in October?”
__________________________________________
“The cloudy evening has closed in upon us early. We have eluded its tediousness by reading aloud ‘The Heir of Redcliffe,’ a charming book, which teaches more irresistibly than the ordained preacher the virtues of forgiveness and self-sacrifice. These Christian graces are vitalized in the lives of Guy and Amy. Amy does right with so much simplicity and so little effort, that one feels as if it were easy to do it; and as my task is much easier than hers as the lover is less dear than the husband, I will try. You think me cool; I do not feel so. I start and tremble at this howling wind—it reminds me that Carl is on the ocean.
“I was here startled by seeing that my father was observing me.
“ ‘My child,’ he said, ‘you are shaking with cold,’ (not ‘with cold,’ I could have answered). ‘These confounded stoves,’ he added, ‘keep one in an alternate ague and fever. Come, waltz round the room with your sister, and get into a glow.’
“So, singing our own music, we waltzed till we were out of breath, and Alice has seated herself at picquet with my father, who has a run of luck, ‘point! seizième! and capote!’ which puts him into high good humor—and I may write unmarked. Carl was to write me once more before his embarkation, but I can not get the letter till my return, and I have not the poor consolation of looking over the list of the steamer’s passengers and seeing the strange names of those who would seem to me happy enough to be in the same ship with him; and yet, what care they for that! Poor fellow! he will be but sorry company. I find support in the faith that I am doing my duty. He could not see it in that light, and had neither comfort for himself nor sympathy for me. I almost wish now, when I think of him in his desolation, that I could receive the worldly philosophy my old nurse offered me when, as Carl drove away, she came into my room and found me crying bitterly. She hushed me tenderly as she was used to do when I was a child; and when I said,
‘‘Hannah, it is for him, not for myself, I feel!’
‘‘Oh! that’s nothing but a nonsense, child,’ she said. ‘Men ain’t that way; they go about among folks and get rid of feelings; it’s women that stay at home and keep ‘em alive, brooding on ‘em!’
“Why should I thus shrink from a consequence I ought to desire? But perhaps it will be easier as I go on, if it be true that
‘Each goodly thing is hardest to begin;
But entered in a spacious court they see
Both plain, and pleasant to be walked in.’
“Wednesday Morning. My father happened to cast his eyes across the table as I finished my last page, and he saw a tear fall on it. Throwing down his cards he said,
“ ‘Come, come, children! it’s time to go to bed;’ and stooping over me, he kissed me fondly and murmured: ‘Dear, good child! I can not stand it if I see you unhappy.’
“He shall not see me so. I have risen to-day with this resolution. The rain has been pouring down all night, but at this glorious point of sight, directly under Mount Washington, we are equal to either fate—going on or staying. Mr. Thompson has again surprised us with a delicious breakfast of tender chicken, light biscuit, excellent bread, fresh eggs, and that rarest of comforts at a hotel—delicious coffee, with a brimming pitcher of cream. We wondered at all these things, usually the result of a feminine genius, for we have not heard the flutter of a petticoat in the house till we saw our respectable landlady gliding through the room. We learned from her that she was the only womankind on the diggings. Every thing is neatly done, so we bless our October star for exempting us from the careless and hurried service of the Celtic race. While it rains, we walk on the piazza, enjoying the beautiful and ever-varying effects of the clouds as they roll down the mountains, and roll off; like the shadows on our human life, dear Susan, that God’s love does both send and withdraw.
“The Glen House is on the lowest ridge of the hill that rises opposite to Mount Washington, which, as its name indicates, stands head and shoulders above the other summits—having no peer. Madison and Monroe come next, on the left, and then Jefferson, who appears (characteristically?) higher than he is. In a line with Mount Washington, on the other side, are Adams, Clay, etc. These names (excepting always Washington) do not, with their recent political associations, seem quite to suit these subline, eternal mounts, but as time rolls on, the names will grow to signs of greatness, and harmonize with physical stability and grandeur. Jefferson’s head seems modeled after a European pattern. It runs up to a sharp point, and wants but accumulated masses of ice to be broken into Alpine angles. My father says there are other passes in the mountains more beautiful than this; none can be grander…..
“My father has been most sweet and tender to me to-day. Whenever he lays his hand upon my head, it seems like a benediction. And Alice is so kind, projecting future pleasures and sweet solaces for me. You know how I love her little girl. To-day, while we were walking, she heard me sigh, and putting her arm around me, she said: ‘Will you let Sarah come and pass the winter with you and father?’ I trust my look fully answered her. I can not yet talk even with her as I do on paper to you—a confidential implement is a pen…..
“We have all been walking, in the lowering
[p. 49]
twilight on the turnpike, which is making by a joint stock company, up Mount Washington. The road, by contract, is to be finished in three years; the cost is estimated at $63,000. The workmen, of course, are nearly all Irishmen, with Anglo-Saxon heads to direct them. The road is, as far as possible, to be secured by frequent culverts, and by Macadamizing it, from the force of winter torrents. But that nothing is impossible to modern science, it would seem impossible to vanquish the obstacles to the enterprise—the inevitable steepness of the ascent, the rocky precipices, etc. We amused ourselves with graduating the intellectual development of the Celtic workmen by their answers to our questions.
“ ‘When is the road to be finished?’
“ ‘And, faith, Sir, it must be done before winter comes down below.’
“ ‘The next replied, ‘When the year comes round.’ And another: ‘Some time between now and never.’
“ ‘Friend,’ said I to one of them, ‘have you such high mountains in Ireland?’
“ ‘That we have, and higher—five miles high!’ Paddy is never over-crowed.
“ ‘Straight up?’ I asked.
“ ‘By my faith and troth, straight up, it is.’
“ ‘In what part of Ireland is that mountain?’
“ ‘In county Cork.’
“ ‘Of course, in county Cork!’ said my father, and we passed on through the debris of blasted rocks, stumps of uprooted trees, and heaps of stone, till we got far enough into the mountain to feel the sublimity of its stern, silent solitude, with the night gathering its shroud of clouds about it, and we were glad to pick our way back to our cheerful tea-table at Mr. Thompson’s. We had a long evening before us, but we diversified it (my father hates monotony, and was glad of ‘something different,’ as he called it) by bowling—my father pitting Alice against me. She beat me, according to her general better luck in life.”*…..
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*EXTRACT FROM MR.LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“Walked out this afternoon amidst precipices and uprooted trees, where Paddies, the plague of our Egypt, are making a road to the summit of Mount Washington, that men, women, and much cattle may be dragged up there, and there befogged.”
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“ Thursday Morning, 6th October. – The weather still uncertain, but more beautiful in its effects on these grand mountains in their October glory, than I can describe to you. They are grand—Mount Washington being higher than Rhigi and Rhigi and Pilatus are majestic, even in the presence of Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau. The rich coloring of our autumnal foliage is unknown in Europe, and how it lights up with brilliant smiles the stern face of the mountains! Even when the sun is clouded, the beeches that skirt the evergreens look like a golden fringe, and wherever they are they ‘make sunshine in a shady place.’ The maples are flame-colored, and, when in masses, so bright that you can scarcely look steadily on them; and where they are small, and stand singly, they resemble (to compare the greater to the less) flamingos lighted on the mountain side. There is an infinite diversity of coloring—soft brown, shading off into the pale yellow, and delicate May-green. None but a White of Selborne, with his delicately defining pen, could describe them. While we stood on the piazza admiring and exclaiming, the obliging Mr. Thompson brought out a very good telescope, and adjusted it so that our eyes could explore the mountains. He pointed out the bridle-path to the summit of Mount Washington. Various obstacles have prevented our attempting the ascent. If my father would have trusted us to guides, there are none in October, nor trained horses, for as the feed is brought from below, they are sent down to the lowlands as soon as the season is over. Besides, the summits are now powdered with snow, and the paths near the summits slippery with ice; and though I like the scramble and the achievement of attaining a difficult eminence, I much prefer the nearer, better defined, and less savage views below it.*
__________________________________________
*EXTRACT FROM MR. LANGDON’S JOURNAL
“Thursday. Sitting by a window where I see nothing but these useless mountains. Slept little, and when I slept, haunted by slides, torrents, and all dire mischances. Waked by a gong! Rain and sunshine alternately, so that no mortal can tell whether to go or stay,” etc.
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“ Guided by our good landlord, my eye had followed the path past two huge out-standing rocks, which look like Druidical monuments, to the summit of Mount Washington, where I had the pleasure of descrying and announcing the figure of a man. My father and Alice both looked, but could not make it out. I referred to Mr. Thompson, and his accustomed eye confirmed the accuracy of mine. Mr. Thompson was much exercised with conjectures as to where the traveler came from. He had seen none for the last few days in the mountains except our party, and he naturally concluded the man had made his ascent from the Crawford House. My eye seemed spell-bound to the glass. I mentally speculated upon the character and destiny of the pilgrim who, at this season, and alone, had climbed these steeps. My imagination invested him with a strange interest. He had wandered far away from the world, and above it. There was something in his mind—perhaps in his destiny—akin to the severity of this barren solitude. The spell was broken by a call from my father: ‘Come, Mary! are you glued to that glass?’ he exclaimed. ‘The rain is over, and we are off in half an hour.’ And so we were, with Thompson, Junior, for our driver—one of our young countrymen who always makes me proud, dear Susan, performing well the task of your inferior, with the capacity and self-respect of your equal. Long live the true republicanism of New-England!
“My father had been rather nettled in the morning by what he thought an attempt, on the part of Mr. Thompson to take advantage of our dependence, and charge us exorbitantly for con-
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veying us thirty-three miles, to the Mountain-Notch;’ but, on talking the matter over with our host, he found that his outlay, with tolls, and other expenses, was such that he only made what every Yankee considers his birthright—‘ a good business’—out of us. So my father, being relieved from the dread of imposition, was in happy condition all day, and permitted us, without a murmur of impatience, to detain him, while we went off the road to see one of the two celebrated cascades of the neighborhood. It was the ‘Glen-Ellis Fall.’ We compromised, and gave up seeing the ‘Crystal Fall,’ a half a mile off the road on the other side; and enjoyed the usual consolation of travelers on like occasions of being told that the one we did not see was far best worth seeing. However, I hold all these wild leaps of mountain streams to be worth seeing, each having an individual beauty; and advise all who may follow in our traces, to go to the top and bottom of ‘Glen Ellis.’
“I have often tried to analyze the ever-fresh delight of seeing a water-fall, and have come to the conclusion that it partly springs from the scramble to get at the best and all the points of view, setting the blood in the most sluggish veins to dancing; for as you know, ‘Tout depend de la maniѐre que le sang circule.’ I can not describe to you the enjoyment of this day’s ride. As heart to heart, my father’s serenity answered to my cheerfulness and rewarded it. Our cup was brimming and sparkling. There was a glowing vitality in the western breeze that blew all the clouds from our spirits, and shaped those on the mountain sides into ever-changing beauty, or drove them off the radiant summits. We laughed, as the vapor condensing into the smallest of hail-stones, came pelting in our faces as if the elements had turned boys, and threw them in sport! What may not Nature be to us – play-fellow, consoler, teacher, religious minister! Strange that any one wretch should be found to live without God in the world, when the world is permeated with its Creator!
“Our level road wound through the Pinkham woods in the defiles of the mountains, and at every turn gave them to us in a new aspect. It seemed to me that the sun had never shone so brightly as it now glanced into the forest upon the stems of the white birches—Wordsworth’s ‘Ladies of the Wood’—and shone on the Mosaic carpet made by the brilliant fallen leaves. We missed the summer-birds, but the young partridges abounded, and, hardly startled by our wheels, often crossed our path. We saw a fox, who turned and very quietly surveyed us, as if to ask who the barbarians were that so out of season invaded his homestead. One of us—I will not tell you which, lest you discredit the story—fancying, while the wagon was slowly ascending, to make a cross-cut on foot through some woodland, saw a bear—yes, a bear! face to face! and made, you may be sure, a forced march to the highway. The mountaineers were not at all surprised when we recounted what we fancied a hair-breadth ‘scape; but quietly told us that ‘three bears had been seen in that neighborhood lately, but bears did no harm unless provoked, or desperately hungry.’ It was not a very pleasant thought that our lives depended on the chances of Bruin’s appetite.
“This meeting with the fox—the Mercury of the woods—and with the bear—the hero of many a dramatic fable – would, in the forests of the Old World, and in prolific Old World fancies, have been wrought into pretty traditions for after-ages. I might have figured as the
‘Forsaken, woeful, solitary maid,
In wilderness and wasteful deserts strayed,’
set on by the ramping beast! And for the knight, why, it would be easy to convert the wanderer I descried on the summit of Mount Washington, into a lover and a deliverer, whose ‘allegiance and fast fealty’ had bound him to our trail. But, alas! there is no leisure in this material age for fancy-weaving; and all our way was as bare of tradition or fable as if no human footstep had impressed it, till we came to a brawling stream near ‘Davis’s Crossing,’ which we were told was called ‘Nancy’s Brook.’ We heard various renderings of the origin of the name, but all ended in one source—man’s perjury and woman’s trust. A poor girl, some said, had come with a woodsman, a collier, or tree-feller, and lived with him in the mountains, toiling for him, and singing to him, no doubt,
‘When she his evening food did dress,’
till he grew tired, and one day went forth and did not come back—and day after day she waited, but her Theseus did not return, and she was starved to death on the brink of the little brook that henceforward was to murmur her tragic tale. The sun was set behind the ridge of Mount Willard, when we reached the ‘Willey Slide,’ and Alice and I walked the last two miles to the Mountain Notch. Just after we alighted from the wagon, and while we were yet close to it, at a turn in the road I perceived a pedestrian traveler before us, who, seeming startled by the sound of our wheels, sprang lightly over the fence. I involuntarily withdrew my arm from Alice’s, and stood still, gazing after him for the half-instant that passed before he disappeared in the forest.
“‘Are you frightened?’ said Alice; ‘this is a lonely road. Shall I hail the wagon?’
“ ‘Oh! no,’ I replied.
“ ‘But,’ she urged, ‘this may be some fugitive from justice.’
“ ‘Nonsense, Alice; don’t you see by his air that he is a gentleman?’
“ ‘No,’ she saw nothing but that ‘he was light of foot, and anxious to escape observation.’
“I had seen more; I had seen his form who henceforward is to me as if he had passed the bourne whence no traveler returns; or, what is more probable, my imagination had lent to the figure the image that possesses it. Alice—she is a cautious little woman—was continually looking back, from fear, I from hope; but we saw
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nothing more of the traveler. The apparition had spoiled our walk. The brief twilight of October was shortened by the mountain-walls on either side of the road. We had no time to look for the cascades, and fantastic resemblances animals and human profiles that we had been forewarned to observe on the hillsides. The stars were coming out, and the full moon—indicated by the floods of light behind Mount Webster when we passed the ‘Notch’ and came upon the level area where the ‘Crawford House’ stands. Here we found my father, already seated in a rocking-chair, by a broad hearth-stone and a roaring, crackling fire. And beside these cheering types of home-contentments, he had found a gentleman from the low country, with whom he was already in animated discourse. The stranger was a fine, intelligent, genial-looking person, who proved to be a clergyman whom Alice had once before met at the Flume House. He is a true lover of Nature, and explorer of Nature’s secrets—a geologist, botanist, etc.; and he most wisely comes up to the high places, at all seasons, whenever he feels the need of refreshment to his bodily and mind’s eye. Perhaps he finds here an arcana for his theology, and I am sure that, after a study here, he may go home better able, by his high communing, to inform and elevate the minds of others. No teachers better understood the sources and means of mental power and preparation than Moses and Mohammed; and their studies were not in theological libraries, but in the deepest of nature’s solitudes.
“Perhaps our friend has no direct purpose beyond his own edification in his rambles in the mountains. He is familiar with every known resort among them, and most kindly disposed to give us thoroughfare travelers information. He made for us from memory a pencil-sketch of the peaks to be seen from Mount Willard, with their names. We verified them to-day, and found the outline as true as if it had been daguerreotyped. An observation so keen, and a memory so accurate are to be envied.
“This house, at the Mountain Notch is called the Crawford House. The Old Crawford House, familiar to the pioneer travelers in this region, stands a few rods from it, or rather did, till the past winter, when it was burned, and its site is now marked by charred timbers. Old Crawford’s memory will live, as one of these eternal hills bears his name. He actually lived to a good old age, and for many years in rather awful solitude here, and at the last with some of the best blessings that wait on old age—‘respect, and troops of friends.’ His son, whose stature, broad shoulders, and stolid aspect bring to mind the Saxon peasant of the Middle Ages, is driver in the season and sportsman out of it. He stood at the door this morning as we were driving off to the Falls of the Ammonoosuck, with his fowling-piece in hand, and asked leave to occupy a vacant seat in the wagon. My father was a sportsman in his youth—some forty years ago; his heart warms at the sight of a gun, and besides, I fancy he had some slight hope of mending our cheer by a brace of partridges, so he very cheerfully acquiesced in Crawford’s request. Alice and I plied him with questions, hoping to get something out of an old denizen of the woods. But he knew nothing, or would tell nothing. The ‘tongues in trees’ were far more fluent than his. But even so stony a medium had power afterward to make my heart beat. I was standing near him at the end of the Falls, and away from the rest, and I asked him (Sue, I confess I have been either thinking or dreaming of that ‘fugitive’ all night!) if he had seen a foot-traveler pass along the road the last evening or this morning? ‘No; there was few travelers any way in October.’ He vouchsafed a few more words, adding: ‘It’s a pity folks don’t know the mountains are never so pretty as in October, and sport never so smart.’ Was there ever a sportsman the dullest, most impassive, but he had some perception of woodland beauty? While we were talking, and I was seemingly measuring, with my eye, the depth of the water, as transparent as the air, my father and sister had changed their position, and come close to me. ‘Oh!’ said the man, ‘I recollect—I did see a stranger on Mount Willard this morning, when I went out with my gun; he was drawing the mountains: a great many of the young folks try to do it, but they don’t make much likeness.’ Perhaps this timely generalization of friend Crawford, prevented my father and Alice’s thoughts following the direction of mine. I know this myth is not Carl Hermann—it is not even possible it should be—and yet, the resemblance that, in my one glance, I had fancied to perceive to him and the coincidence of the sketching, had invested friend Crawford with a power to make my cheeks burn and my hands cold as ice. I stole off and looked at the deep, smooth cavities the water had welled in the rocks; but I did not escape my sister’s woman’s eye. ‘Mary dear,’ she whispered, when she joined me, ‘you are not so strong as you think yourself.’ Dear Susan, if I am not strong, I will be patient. Patience, you will say, implies a waiting for something to come. Well, let it be so. Can a spark of hope live under the ashes I have heaped upon it?.....
“The rocks are very beautiful at these Falls of the Ammonoosuck. The stream, which never here can be a river, is now, by the unusual droughts of the summer, shrunk to mere rill; but even now, and at all seasons, it must be worth the drive to see it. Worth the drive! A drive anywhere in these hills ‘pays’—to borrow the slang of this bank-note world—for itself. It is a pure enjoyment. On our return we repeatedly saw young partridges in our path, nearly as tame as the chickens of the basse-cour. The whir-r-ing of their wings struck a spark from our sportsman’s eye, and—a far easier achievement—startled the blood in my father’s veins. The instinct to kill game is, I
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believe, universal with man, else how should it still live in my father, who, though he blusters like Monkbarns, is very much of an Uncle Toby in disposition? He sprang from the wagon, borrowed Crawford’s gun, and reminding Alice and me so much of Mr. Pickwick that we laughed in spite of our terror lest he should kill—not the partridge, but himself; but luckily, he escaped unharmed—and so did the bird! Crawford secured two or three brace of them in the course of the morning’s drive. I fear we shall relish them at breakfast to-morrow, in spite of our lamentations over their untimely loss of their pleasant mountain-life. I asked our driver how they survived the winter (if haply they escaped the fowler) in these high latitudes? ‘Oh!’ he said, ‘they had the neatest was of folding their legs under their wings and lying down in the snow.’ They subsist on berries and birchen-buds—dainty fare, is it not?
“We found a very comfortable dinner awaiting us, which rather surprised us, as our landlord, Mr. Lindsay—a very civil, obliging person, and a new proprietor here, I believe, had promised us but Lenten entertainment; but ‘deeds, not words,’ seems the motto of these mountaineers. In the afternoon we drove up Mount Willard –
‘Straight up Ben-Lomond did we press’—
but our horses seemed to find no difficulty for themselves, and we no danger in the ascent. I shall not attempt to describe the view. I have never seen any mountain prospect resembling that of the deep ravine (abyss), with its convex mountainsides; the turnpike-road looking like a ribbon carelessly unwound, the only bit of level to be seen, and prolonged for miles. The distant mountains that bound the prospect you may see elsewhere, but this ravine, with the traces of the ‘Willey Slide’ on one side of it, has no parallel. Don’t laugh at me for the homeliness of the simile—it suggested a gigantic cradle. Here, as elsewhere, we were dazzled by the brilliancy of the October foliage, and having found a seat quite as convenient as a sofa—though, being of rock, not quite as easy—we loitered till the last golden hue faded from the highest summit; and we should have staid to see the effect of the rising moon on the summits contrasting with the black shadows of night in the abyss, but my father had observed that our driver had neglected the precaution of blanketing his horses, and as a mother is not more watchful of a sucking child than he is of the well-being of animals, it matters not whether they are his own or another’s, he begged us to sacrifice our romance to their safety. Alice and I walked down the mountain; it was but a half-hour’s easy walk……
“I have forborne talking with Alice on the subject that haunts me. I know I have her sympathy; and that should satisfy me. But this evening, as we were returning, she said: ‘Did you feel any electric influence as we sat looking at the view Crawford’s ‘stranger’ sketched this morning?’ ‘I thought of Carl,’ I honestly answered, and turned the subject. Alas! Sue, when do I not think of him! …..
“Profile House: Saturday Evening. We have again, to-day, experienced the advantage of these open mountain vehicles, so preferable to the traveling-jails called stage-coaches, which always remind me of Jonah’s traveling accommodations. Again, to-day, we have been enchanted with the brilliancy of the foliage. It is just at the culminating point of beauty, and I think it does not remain at this point more than three or four days when you perceive it is a thought less bright. Why is it that no painting of our autumnal foliage has succeeded? It has been as faithfully imitated as the colors on the pallet can copy these living, glowing colors; but those who have best succeeded—even Cole, with his accurate eye and beautiful art—has but failed. The pictures, if toned down, are dull; if up to Nature, are garish to repulsiveness. Is it not that Nature’s toning is inimitable, and that the broad o’erhanging firmament, with its cold, serene blue, and the soft green of the herbage, and brown of the reaped harvest-field, temper, to the eye the intervening brilliancy, and that, within the limits of a picture, there is not sufficient expanse to reproduce these harmonies?”…..
“Saturday Evening. We have driven some 23 miles—from the Mountain Notch to the Franconian hotel to-day. The weather has been delicious. The drive has been more prosaic, or approaching to it, than we have before traveled in this hill-country. This October coloring would make far tamer scenery beautiful; but I can fancy it very bleak and dismal when
‘Blow, blow November’s winds:’
whereas here, at the ‘Franconian Notch,’ you feel, as it were, housed and secured by Nature’s vast fortresses and defenses. The ‘Eagle’s Cliff’ is on one side of you, and Mount Cannon (called so from a resemblance of a rock on the summit to a cannon) on the other; and they so closely fold and wall you in that you need but a poetic stretch of the arms to touch them with either hand; and when the sun glides over the arch in the zenith above—but a four hours’ visible course in mid-winter—you might fancy yourself sheltered from the sin and sorrow that great eye witnesseth. You will accuse me, I know, dear, rational friend, of being ‘exalte,’ (vernacular, cracked,) but remember, we are alone in these inspiring solitudes, free from the disenchantment of the eternal buzzing of the summer swarms that the North gives up, and the South keeps not back.
“We were received at the Profile House with a most smiling welcome by Mr. Weeks, the pro tem. host, who promises to make us ‘as comfortable as is in his power,’ and is substantiating his promise by transferring his dinner-table from the long, uncarpeted dinner-saloon, with its fearful rows of bare chairs and tables, to a well-furnished home-looking apartment, where a fire-place worthy of the Middle Ages, is already brightened with a hospitable fire. The
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great rambling hotel is vacant, and its silence unbroken, save by the hastening to and fro of our willing host, who unites all offices of service in his own person, and the pattering of his pretty little boy’s feet—the little fellow following him like his shadow, and, perchance, running away from other shadows in this great empty house. The little fellow makes music to my ear. There is no pleasanter sound than the footsteps of a child ……
“I left Alice dressing for dinner. I think Alice would perform the ceremonial of a lady if she were shipwrecked in a desert island, and my father awaiting dinner. Dear father is never the pleasantest company at these seasons, when ‘time stands still withal,’ or rather, to him keeps a snail’s fretting pace. Well, I left them both and went down to the Lake—a short walk—to greet the ‘Old Man of the Mountain,’ as they prosaically call the wonderful head at the very summit of the headland cliff, upreared on high over the beautiful bit of water named ‘The Old Man’s Punch-bowl.’ The nomenclature of our country certainly does not indicate one particle of poetry or taste in its people. There are, to be sure, namesakes of the Old World, which intimate the exile’s loving memories, and there are scattered, here and there, euphonious and significant Indian names, not yet superseded by ‘Brownvilles’ or ‘Smithdales,’ but for the most part, one would infer that pedagogues, sophomores, and boors had presided at the baptismal font of the land. To call that severe Dantescan head, which it would seem impossible that accident should have formed, so defined and expressive is its outline, like the Sphinx, a mystery in the desert—to call it the ‘Old Man of the Mountain,’ is irreverence, desecration; and this exquisite little lake, lapped amidst the foldings and windings of the mountains, whose million unseen spirits may do the bidding of the heroic old Prospero who presides over it; to call this gem of the forest a ‘punch-bowl’ is a sorry travesty! I paid my homage to him while his profile cut the glowing twilight, and then sat down at the brim of the lake. Dear Susan,
‘The leaning
of the close trees o’er the brim,
had a sound beneath their leaves;’
and I will borrow two lines more to help out my meaning;
‘Driftings of my dream do light
All the skies by day and night.’
But truly, it is mere drift-wood, not fit even to build a ‘castle in the air.’ I was startled from my musing by a rustling of the branches behind me, and I turned, expecting – not to see a bear or a fox, but my fancies incorporate. The leaves were still quivering, but I saw no apparent cause for so much disturbance—I probably had startled a brace of partridges from their roost. They brought me back to the actual world, and I came home to an excellent dinner, which I found my father practically commending.
“Sunday. My father has brought us up to so scrupulous an observance of the Puritan Sabbath, that I was rather surprised, this morning, by his proposition to drive over to the Flume. His equanimity had been disturbed by finding one of the horses that had brought us here, seemingly in a dying condition. He was one of the ‘team’ that had taken us on to Mount Willard, and my father had then prophesied that he would suffer from the driver’s neglect to blanket him. He was in nowise comforted by the verification of his ‘I told you so!’ but walked to and fro from the stable, watching the remedies administered, and vituperating all youth as negligent, reckless, and hard-hearted! I think it was half to get rid of this present annoyance that he proposed the drive to the Flume, saying, as he did so: “These mountains are a great temple, my children; it matters not much where we stand to worship.’ We stopped for a half-hour at a little fall just by the roadside, called by the mountain-folk ‘The Basin,’ and by fine people, ‘The Emerald Bowl’—a name suggested by the exquisite hue of the water, which truly is of as soft and bright a green as an emerald. The stream has curiously cut its way through a rock white and smooth, and almost polished by its friction, which overhangs the deep, circular bowl like a canopy, or rather, like a half-uplifted lid, its inner side being mottled and colored like a beautiful shell. The stream glides over the brim of its sylvan bowl and goes on its way rejoicing. We loitered here for a half-hour watching the golden and crimson leaves that had dropped in, and laid in rich mosaics in the eddies of the stream.
“The morning was misty, and the clouds were driven low athwart the mountains, forming, as Alice well said, pedestals on which their lofty heads were upreared. No wonder that people in mountains and misty regions become imaginative, even superstitious. These forms, falling, rising, floating over the eternal hills, susceptible of dazzling brightness, and deepening into the gloomiest of earth’s shadows, are most suggestive to a superstitious dreamer.
“I shall not attempt, my friend, to describe this loveliest of all five-mile drives, from the ‘Profile House’ to the Flume under the Eagle’s Cliff, and old Prospero, and beside his lake, and the ‘Emerald Bowl,’ and then finished by the most curious, perhaps the most beautiful passage we have yet seen in the mountains,‘The Flume’—thus called probably from a homely association with the race-way of a mill.
“The ravine is scarcely more than a fissure, probably made by the gradual wearing of the stream. I am told the place resembles the Bath of Pfeffers, in Switzerland; that world’s wonder can scarcely be more romantically beautiful than our Flume. The small stream, which is now reduced to a mere rill by the prolonged droughts, forces it way between walls of rock, upheaved in huge blocks like regular mason-work. Where you enter the passage, it may be some hundred yards wide, but it gradually contracts till you may almost touch either side with
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your outstretched arms. I only measured the height of the rock walls with my eye, and a woman’s measure is not very accurate—it may be one hundred or one hundred and fifty feet. Tall trees, at the summits, interlace, and where they have fallen, bridge the passage from one side to the other. Rich velvety mosses cover the rocks like a royal garment, and vines, glittering in their autumnal brightness, laid on them like rich embroidery, so that we might say, as truly as was said of the magnificence of Oriental nature, that ‘Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.’ But how, dear Susan, am I to show the picture to you? The sun glancing on the brilliant forest above us, and the indescribable beauty of the shrubs, golden and crimson, and fine purple, that shot out of the crevices of the rocks! It is idle to write or talk about it; but only let me impress on you that this enchanting coloring is limited to the first days of October. I am afraid it may be said of scenery as has been said of lover’s tête-a-tête talks, that it resembles those delicate fruits which are exquisite where they are plucked, but incapable of transmission. As my father can never enjoy any thing selfishly, he was particularly pleased with the nice little foot-path won from the mountain-side, and the frequent foot-bridges, that indicate the numbers that have taken this wild walk before us. My father fancies he enjoys our security from the summer swarms, but his social nature masters his theories.
“Alice and I were amused this morning, just at the highest access of our enthusiasm, while we stood under a huge rock wedged in between the two walls, on looking back to see my father sitting on a bench, arranged as a point of sight, not gazing, but listening profoundly—his graceful person and beautiful old head inclined in an attitude of the deepest attention—to a loafer who had unceremoniously joined us, and who, as my father afterwards rather reluctantly confessed, was recounting to him the particulars of his recent wooing of a third Mrs. Smith or Mrs. Brown. And when we returned to our quarters at the Profile House and came down to dinner, we met our landlord at the door, his face even more than usually effulgent with smiles.
“‘There has a lady and gentleman come in,’ he said, ‘and your father has no objection to their dining at table with you.’
“His voice was slightly deprecatory. I think he did not quite give us credit for our father’s affability, Of course, we acquiesced, and were afterwards edified by our brief acquaintance with the strangers—a mother and son, who had come up from the petty cares of city life for a quiet ramble among the hills—to find here
‘A peace no other season knows.’
“The mother wears widow’s weeds, and has evidently arrived at the ‘melancholy days.’ As we just now sat enjoying our evening fire, ‘My hearthstone,’ she said, ‘was never cold for seventeen years; but there is no light there now. My children are dispersed, and he who was dearest and best lies under the clods! My youngest and I hold together—I can not let him go.’ The loving companionship of a mother and a son who returns to her tenderness the support of his manly arm, never shrinking from the shadows that fall from her darkened and stricken heart, or melting those shadows in his own sunny youth—is one of the consoling pictures of life. This poor lady seems to have the love of nature, which never dies out. It is pleasant to see with what patience her son cared for the rural wealth she is amassing in her progress through the hills, the late flowers, and bright leaves, and mosses, though I have detected a boyish, mischievous smile as he stowed them away…..
“We had something approaching to an adventure this evening on Echo Lake, the loveliest of all these mountain lakes, and not more than half a mile from our present inn, the Profile House. Our dear father consented to go out with us, and let Alice and me, who have been well trained at that exercise in our home lake, take our turns with him in rowing. This lake is embosomed in the forest, and lies close nestled under the mountains, which here have varied shape and beautiful outline. It takes its name from its clear echoes. We called, we sang, and my father whistled, and from the deep recesses of the hills our voices came back as if spirit called to spirit, musical and distinct. You know the fascination there is in such a scene. The day had continued misty to the last; the twilights at this season are at best short, and while my father was whistling, one after another, the favorite songs of his youth, we were surprised by nightfall. My father startled us with
“ ‘Bless me, girls, what are you about?’
“It was he who was most entranced.
“ ‘I can not see our landing-place!’”
“Neither, with all possible straining, could our younger eyes descry it. We approached as near the shore as we dared, but could go no nearer without the danger of swamping our boat, when suddenly we perceived a blessed apparition—a white signal—made quite obvious in the dim light by a background of evergreens. We rowed toward it with all our might, wondering what kind friend was waving it so eagerly. As we approached near the shore it suddenly dropped and hung motionless, and when we landed we saw no person and heard no footstep. I untied the signal, and finding it a man’s large, fine linen handkerchief, I eagerly explored the corner for the name, but the name had evidently just been torn off. Strange! We puzzled ourselves with conjectures. My father cut us short with:
“ ‘’Tis that young man at the hotel. Young folks like this sort of thing.’
“But it was not he; we found him reading to his mother, who said she was just about sending him to look after us.”
Thus abruptly ended Mary Langdon’s journal-
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letter. The reason of its sudden discontinuance will be found in our own brief relation of the experience of the following morning, (Monday,) which we had from all the parties that partook in it.
Our friends were to leave the Profile House on Monday, on their return to the lowlands, to go from there to the Flume House, visit “the Pool,” and then down to the pretty village of Plymouth, in New Hampshire.
Mary and her sister were early, and having a spare half-hour before breakfast, went down to take a last look at Prospero and his “bowl.’ There they found a crazy, old, leaky boat, with a broken oar, and Mary, spying some dry bits of board on the shore, deftly threw them in and arranged them so that she and her sister could get in dry-shod. Alice looked doubtfully at the crazy little craft and hung back—the thought of husband and children at home is always a sedative—but her eager sister overcame her scruples, and they were soon fairly out from shore in deep water. They went on, half-floating, half-rowing, unconscious of the flying minutes. Not so their father, who after waiting breakfast “an eternity,” (as he said, possibly some five minutes!) came to the lake to recall them. Just as he came within fair sight of them, for they were not two hundred yards from him, the boat suddenly began whirling round—a veering wind rushed upon them. The poor father saw their dilemma, and could not help them. He could not swim. He screamed for help, but what likelihood that any one should hear or could aid him! Alice prudently, sat perfectly still. The oar was in Mary’s hand—she involuntarily sprang to her feet—her head became giddy, not so much, she afterward averred, with the whirling of the boat, as with the sight of her poor old father, and the sense that she had involved Alice in this peril. She plunged the oar into the water in the vain hope by firmly holding it of steadying the boat; but she dropped it from her trembling hand, and in reaching after it, she too dropped over into the water, and in her struggle she pushed the boat from her, and thus became herself beyond the possibility of her sister’s reach. Her danger was imminent—she was sinking. Her father and sister shrieked for help, and help came! A plash in the water, and a strong man, with wonderful preternatural strength and speed, was making his way toward Mary. In one moment more he had grasped her with one hand. She had still enough presence of mind not to embarrass him by any struggles, and shouting a word of comfort to Alice, he swam to the shore and laid Mary in her father’s arms. He then returned to the boat, and soon brought it to shore. There are moments of this strange life of ours not to be described—feelings for which language in no organ. While such a moment sped with father and daughters, their deliverer stood apart. The father gazed upon his darling child, satisfying himself that “not a hair had perished,” but she was only “fresher than before;” and, as he afterward said, “fully recovering his wits,” he turned to thank the preserver of his children. He was standing half concealed behind a cluster of evergreens.
“Come forward, my dear fellow,” he said; “for God’s sake, let me grasp your hand!”
He did not move.
“Oh! come,” urged Mr. Langdon. “Never mind your shirt-sleeves; it’s no time to be particular about trifles.”
Still he did not move.
“Oh, come! dear—Carl,” said Mary, and her lover sprang to her feet.
What immediately followed was not told me, but there was no after coldness or reluctance on the part of the good father. His heart was melted and fused in gratitude and affection for his daughter’s lover. His prejudices were vanquished, and he was just as well satisfied as if they had been overcome by the slower processes of reason and conviction.
The truth was, the old gentleman was not to be outdone in magnanimity. Mary’s filial devotion had prepared him to yield his opposition, and he confessed that he had, in his own secret counsel with himself, determined to recall Hermann at the end of another year, if he proved constant and half as deserving as his foolish girl thought him. “But Prospero,” he said, “had seen fit to take the business into his own hands, and setting his magic to work, had stirred up a tempest in his punch-bowl to bring these young romancers together.”
But by what spell had he conjured up the lover at the critical moment?
Hermann confessed that not being able to get off in the steamer of the 29th, he had delayed his embarkation for ten days, and the magic of love—the only magic left to our disenchanted world—had drawn him to the White Mountains, where he might have the consolation—a lover only could appreciate it—of breathing the same atmosphere with Mary, and possibly of seeing her, unseen. Thus he had stood on the summit of Mount Washington, when, by some mysterious magnetism, Mr. Thompson’s telescope had been pointed to it. He was the “fugitive from justice” at Willy’s Slide, the ambitious artist on Fort Willard, and the friend whose signal had brought them safely to port on Echo Lake!
Hermann’s arrangements for pursuing his studies in Europe were not disturbed. The good father was in the most complying temper. He consented to have the wedding within this blessed month of October, and graciously granted the prayer of the young people that he would accompany them in their year’s visit to Europe.
“Mary and I are already wedded,” said he to me, with a smile of complete satisfaction; ‘we only take this young fellow into the partnership.”
It was a bright day in the outer and inner world when we parted. And thus ended our October visit to the White Hills of New Hampshire, but not our gratitude to Him who held us
“In his large love and boundless thought.”
[p. 56]
If our friend Mary has imperfectly sketched the beauty of the Mountains, she has exaggerated nothing.
We hope our readers, though perchance o’er-wearied now, may make the complete tour of these lovely places, including, as it should, the enchanting sail over Lake Winepescago, the beautiful drive by North Conway, and the ascents of Kiersarge, Chiconea, Mount Moriah, and the Red Mountain.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The White Hills in October
Subject
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Star-crossed lovers, filial piety, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, off-season tourism.
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator presents the journal of a trip to the White Mountains by Mary Langdon, a young American woman, who has just ended a relationship with her German lover due to her father's disapproval. A mysterious stranger appears at a significant moment and changes the young woman's fortunes.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria. [published anonymously]
Source
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Harper's New Monthly Magazine [edited by Alfred A. Guernsey] (December 1856): 44-56.
Date
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1856
Contributor
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Margaret Erickson, D. Gussman
Relation
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The Continental Monthly [by C. M. Sedgwick] (October 1862): 423-44.
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1856
Ammonoosuck
Boston
cigars
daughters
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
fathers
filial piety
German
Glen Ellis Fall
Harper's New Monthly Magazine
hiking
hotels
hunting
immigration
inns
Irish
journal
Love
marriage
Mayflower
Mohammed
Moses
Mount Rhigi
Mount Washington
Mount Webster
Nancy's Brook
Nature
New England
New Hampshire
Pickwick
Portland
Prospero
railroad
restaurants
Rosalind
rowing
Shakespeare
sisters
The Heir of Redcliffe
Theseus
tourism
Travel
waterfalls
White Mountains
Wordsworth
-
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d1ee4884acd04e04ce879d051fc14887
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Title
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1829
Subject
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Stories published in 1829.
Document
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Text
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THE ELDER SISTER.
_____
‘Lucy loved all that grew upon the ground,
And loveliness in all things living found;
The gilded fly—the fern upon the wall
Were nature’s works, and admirable all.’
‘Yet not so easy was my conquest found,
I met with trouble ere with triumph crown’d.’
Crabbe.
[p. 99]
Mr Walsingham was seated at his family writing desk, absorbed in a literary labor, when Theresa, his eldest daughter, opened his door, advanced eagerly, paused for a moment, arrested by his deeply thoughtful aspect, and again advanced, as, without raising his eye from his paper, he stretched his hand towards her and smiled with that sweet parental smile that indicated the father was never quite merged in the student. ‘I would not have interrupted you, papa,’ said Theresa, ‘but I have something so very important to say to you.’
Mr Walsingham, now the sole parent of a numerous family of children, was as much accustomed as a mother to the communication of the manifold wants, that to the magnifying vision of a child are very important, and affection, and necessity,
[p. 100]
unerring teachers, had taught him the mother’s instinct, to enter completely into his children’s feelings—to stoop to their point of sight. ‘Come in, Theresa,’ he replied to his daughter’s request, ‘you interrupt me no more than the passing stream is interrupted by the shadow of the pretty flower that waves on its brink. What have you so important to say?——a letter! ——from whom?’
‘From dear Mrs Clifford, papa, and such a pressing invitation for me to pass a few days at Bellevue. Mr Walsingham took the letter, but before he had half read it, or at all replied to the eager petition of Theresa’s eyes, half a dozen of the younger children made a sortie from the nursery; as sturdy a little band of remonstrants as ever appeared before any tribunal. ‘Don’t let Theresa go! papa,—you must not let her go!’ they cried with a unanimous voice.
‘Softly, softly, my children—you shall all be heard in turn. Why not let her go, James?’
‘Because, papa, it is impossible for me to get my French lessons ready for Mr Rabbineau if Theresa does not assist me.’
‘Why should not Theresa go, Julia?’
‘Because, papa, my music master is as cross as thunder, when Theresa does not help me with my practising.’
‘Why should not Theresa go, Ellen?’
‘Because, papa, she has not made but just one complete suit for my new doll.’
[p. 101]
‘Why should not Theresa go, Ned?’
‘Because, papa, she has got to new cover my ball.’
‘And you, little Willie, have you any reason why you cannot let sister Theresa go away for a little while?’
‘Yes, indeed, papa,’ replied a bright eyed little cherub, climbing into his sister’s lap. ‘I can’t let her go, because she has done everything for me.’
‘They are unskilful petitioners, Theresa,’ said the father, his delight at the tribute each had involuntarily paid the sweet elder sister gleaming in his moistened eye. ‘Theresa does so much for us all, my dear children,’ he continued, ‘that I believe we must give her the pleasure of a visit to Bellevue.’ Theresa thanked her father warmly, and soon reconciled the minds of the young tribe to her departure, by shifting disappointment for expectation—easy juggling with juvenile subjects.
Theresa Walsingham is the eldest of eight children. At fourteen she met with that irreparable loss, one of the best of mothers. Her father, consulting only her good, and generously sacrificing his own strongest inclinations, sent her away from him for two years, to an institution where her education was successfully conducted. At sixteen she returned home to take the head of his family, and the place of mother, and elder sister, to the infant band. Theresa had no imposing personal qualifications for her official station. We have seen overgrown girls of
[p. 102]
sixteen, with grave aspect, and magisterial air, and solemn voice, and dignified movement, that looked as if, like Eve, they had been born grown up—with nothing of the dew and freshness—and, it may be, imperfection of the morning of life about them. Not so with Theresa. She is not a hair’s breadth above the medium feminine height; she has a child-like air and movement; a tender, flexible voice; a simplicity, impulsiveness, and gaiety of manner, that ‘betrays inexperience at every turn.’ There is nothing about her that demands respect, but every thing that inspires love. She is not a beauty, and yet who can look in that bright sweet face; at that clear laughing eye; that exquisitely compounded, ever varying red and white, that round dimpled cheek; that sweet tempered graceful mouth; that fair, waving, luxuriant hair—who can look at this combination, lighted up with intelligence, tenderly shaded by feeling, without forgetting the rule and art of criticism—feeling that she is beautiful.
Theresa came home to the care of a large family, without any very definite notion of what awaited her. She loved her father devotedly. The memory of her mother was so reverential and vivid, that it operated like her continual presence. But next to the ever-living fountain of love in her affectionate heart, Theresa’s best qualification for her arduous duties was a most happily constituted temper, a perpetual sunshine that brightened every thing around her. This may
[p. 103]
not be merit, but it is a singular physical felicity to have the instrument so perfect that no jar, no shock, no unskilful touch can put it out of tune, or bring forth a discordant note.
Theresa has ardent affections, and strong preferences in matters that all deem essential, but not a particle of sensibility to those trifles at which most persons are disquieted—and disquieted in vain. She cares not whether the day be cloudy or bright; she is unconscious even of the appalling difference between a southwest and northeast wind. Whether she rides or walks, within walking distance, is a matter of no moment to her. She can sit with the windows up or down, as suits the temperament of her companions. She can eat of any dish, cooked in any mode, with a keen relish. She is never discontented alone; never dissatisfied in company; never annoyed by a creaking hinge, or slamming door, or any other trial of delicate nerves. I have seen her sitting in the nursery, reading undisturbed, while her two little sisters, one on each side, were busy with her beautiful tresses, pulling and snarling them into masses which they called curls. The only notice she took of them was to imprint a half-conscious kiss on each warm ruddy cheek as it touched hers. It was a picture of childhood, love, grace, and beauty that a painter should have caught and preserved.
No wonder that her father should have delighted to see her sparkling cup of happiness full to the brim;
[p. 104]
that he took as much pleasure in attending her to Bellevue as she did in going there; that the tear which stole down her cheek at parting, opened a gushing fountain in his heart—a fountain of remembrance and hope.
Theresa was to pass the month of June with Mrs Clifford—the jubilee month of the year. Showers and sunshine were bringing forth the prettiest and freshest decorations of the face of nature; the birds were in full choir; the physical and animal world all alive to activity and joy.
Mrs Clifford lives on a highly cultivated farm, amidst the loveliest inland scenes of our country, fertilised and embellished by a river, that seems set, like a convex mirror, to catch and reflect every visible object. The mistress of this fair domain is a widow, just past the meridian of life, with a large fortune, and an only son. Her affections and interests do not, as is common in similar cases, all flow in the maternal channel, but are diffused like the bounties of heaven. She is the sun of her little system, and her benevolence is sent forth, like rays of light, in every direction, and to every object within her sphere. She is as genuine an amateur of happy human faces as the good Vicar of blessed memory, and she contrives always either to find or make them. She has the rare felicity of delighting her friends, and surrounding herself with grateful and satisfied dependants. She devotes herself to the business of making other people
[p. 105]
happy, with as much ardor as a lawyer pursues his profession. She is no reformer, and yet every body becomes more reasonable and amiable in her atmosphere. She has no single form of virtue, no Procrustes standard; and yet, by a kind of softening and harmonising influence, she assimilates every thing and every body to herself.
Mrs Clifford is never offended, or in the least annoyed by the peculiarities of any individual; on the contrary, she likes to cherish peculiarities, and bring them out, only taking care to place them in a favorable light. In this benevolent art of showing her friends in becoming lights, she excels any person I have ever known. But philanthropic as her temper is, she has her favorites, and first and chiefest among these is Theresa Walsingham. She loves Theresa, she says, for her mother’s sake, who was her friend; and for her father's, who is; and most of all, for her own sweet sake. There was a natural resemblance and accord between Mrs Clifford and her young friend. If Mrs Clifford had been blessed with a daughter, one would have expected to find her just what Theresa is; and not having one, it was natural for her to think of the only mode of supplying the defects of nature’s gifts. She had no definite plan, no formal design in inviting Theresa at this time to Bellevue; but as soon as she was quietly fixed there, she wrote to her son Newton, then an ostensible student at law in New York, to remind him that his absence had
[p. 106]
been already too long; that strawberries were ripe; that Bellevue had put on its company suit, its many colored robe, and that he must come home.
From this moment Theresa heard of nothing but Newton’s expected arrival. If an excursion was planned, or an extraordinary pleasure designed, it was deferred ’till Mr Clifford should come. Every thing was done, or left undone in reference to him. ‘It is dull enough at Bellevue just now, Theresa,’ Mrs Clifford said, and repeated, ‘but when Newton comes he will make it all up to us.’ ‘Yes,’ chimed in half a dozen cordial and sincere voices, ‘Newton is the soul of Bellevue, that he is.’
Fortunate and gifted must be that person who can sustain the excitation of spirits occasioned by the anticipation of an important arrival in the country!
Theresa was one morning rambling alone along the river’s side. She pursued a shaded footpath, ’till she came out upon a fisherman’s hut, on the very verge of the water. A rheumatic, sickly-looking girl was sitting at the door, making artificial flies for angling. They were executed with taste and sufficient skill, and Theresa, after a kind greeting, seated herself, and watched the progress of the girl’s work, and expressed her admiration of her success in no measured terms. Sympathy is the electric touch. Lilly, for that was the girl’s name, Lilly was delighted; never had her fingers worked more dexterously, and never did tongue speak more promptly than her’s replied to
[p. 107]
Theresa’s questions of how she learned her art, where she procured her materials, &c.
Mr Newton Clifford had been at all the trouble of getting an old German to come all the way from New York to teach her. Mr Newton had sent her full twenty dollars worth of materials. Mr Newton, God bless him—and the benediction was not uttered as a phrase of custom, but with an intonation of deep feeling—Mr Newton had done every thing for her father, and herself, and little Ben. ‘Had not Miss ever heard about Mr Newton Clifford and little Ben?’ Theresa confessed she had not; and Lilly dropped her work, and told with such minuteness and emotion, as called forth exclamations and even tears from her pretty auditor—how little Ben, her only brother, a smart daring little fellow, had paddled his father’s boat into the middle of the river; and how, in trying to regain the shore, he had fallen into the stream near the milldam; how Mr Newton, in spite of every body begging him, and screaming to him not to venture in so near the mill-dam—every body but herself—and she looked on and could not speak a word; how he had plunged in and grasped little Ben, but so near the dam, that they both went over together, Mr Newton’s arm fast clasped round Ben; and how he brought him to the shore, though both were like the dead when they got there!
Sensibility and gratitude are always eloquent, and what girl of seventeen would not be moved by a
[p. 108]
generous deed, achieved by a living hero of twenty? Day after day Theresa stole down to the fisherman’s cottage. She assisted Lilly at her pretty work; she even improved on the poor girl’s skill, and under reiterated promises of secrecy, helped her make a beautiful collection of flies, which were designed for a welcoming gift for Mr Newton Clifford.
Theresa’s lively imagination seized all the traits that were presented of Clifford by his partial friends, and combined from them a beautiful portrait, colored with the rich and delicate hues of her own genuine feeling, and pure and elevated taste. Was the portrait a likeness? Was this young dream to be verified by the reality? Was the ‘spirit of her imagination, resembling nothing she had seen in life, to be embodied in the heroic person—Newton Clifford?
Every successive day Clifford was expected, and each day’s mail brought some trivial excuse for his delay. A fortnight of the time allotted for Theresa’s visit had already expired. Mrs Clifl'ord’s habitual serenity was slightly overclouded, and there were moments when Theresa, to a keen observer, would have betrayed the condition of one who waits, the most unenviable state of the human mind.
She took one day her customary stroll to the fisherman’s hut. She had completely won Lilly’s heart; indeed, Theresa played the game of life so well, that she won all hearts.
[p. 109]
Her humble friend testified her affection, as women of every age and condition are apt to do, by setting the crown matrimonial on the brow of her favorite—and in this case it was, in her estimation, the crown of glory.
‘If matches are made in heaven,’ she said, as her busy fingers were plying at her work, ‘I know what is to happen.’
‘What do you mean, Lilly?’ asked Theresa, blushing at the slight disingenuousness of asking what she well knew.
‘Oh, Miss, you and Mr Newton are so much alike —you even look alike. To be sure, he is very tall, and you are short, but that difference there should be; and he is very dark, and you are pure red and white, and that difference there should be; and his hair is jet black, and yours a sunny brown; and his eyes are hazle, and yours are blue as the sky, and that difference is prettiest of all.’
Theresa laughed heartily, and asked, ‘Pray, where is the resemblance, Lilly?’
‘Oh, Miss, it’s that look.’
Lilly was right and true to nature in her perception of harmony in discords.
It was after this last walk and conversation that Theresa returned to Bellevue, and entered the house heated, flushed, and tired. She strolled into the parlor, and went up to the glass to adjust her hair, which had fallen in disorder over her neck and face,
[p. 110]
and reflected in the mirror she saw the figure of a young man stretched on the sofa, with a book in his hand, that had the aspect of a fresh novel. Theresa’s color, deep as it was, deepened to an impurpled crimson. She felt as if she were under a gorgon spell. She could not turn, and nothing, she felt, could be more awkward and silly than to remain as she was. She ventured a second glance at the image, and a third and scrutinising one, for she now perceived that the young gentleman was, or affected to be asleep. ‘This must be Newton Clifford,’ thought Theresa, ‘the figure, hair, complexion, features, all correspond exactly with the description, but, oh how unlike what I expected!’ and if she had been addicted to tears, she would have shed them at her disappointment; but Theresa’s temper was entirely of the l’allegro cast, and she laughed, laughed aloud and heartily. Clifford, for it was he, Clifford awoke, and his mother entering at the moment, after casting a look of surprise at Miss Walsingham and of reproof at the recumbent and nonchalant attitude of her son, formally introduced them to each other. Theresa whirled round on her toe, laughed again, and then flew away like a bird startled from its perch.
‘For heaven’s sake! my dear mother’ asked Clifford ‘who is this hoydenish Blowzabella?’
‘Who? have I not just introduced her to you, Newton? Theresa Walsingham.’
[p. 111]
‘Heaven forefend! I thought you said so, but I could not credit my ears. I expected to see Miss Walsingham a fashionable, thorough bred girl; this little rude concern looks as if she had just come in from a bout at haymaking—heighho! what time is it?' He looked at an exquisite little watch, that, suspended by a safety chain, was tucked into his waistcoat pocket; ‘Eleven o'clock; this country air is a delicious opiate, mother,’ and then yawning and falling back from his half recumbent posture on the sofa cushions, he relapsed into his broken slumbers, leaving Mrs Clifford looking and feeling much like a child, who has blown a soap bubble, seen it expand and brighten, and then suddenly vanish into thin air.
Mrs Clifford was not consoled by being able in part to guess the cause of Theresa’s merriment, for, even to a mother’s eye, there was an appalling disparity between the present appearance of her son and the beau-ideal that had been pourtrayed to Theresa.
Eight months before, Newton Clifford had gone to New York, simple but not rustic in his taste, dress and manners. His fortune and connections in life had cast him into the most fashionable society, and accident rather than choice had involved him in an intimacy with an ultra-fashionable young man of his own age, and a married lady of haut-ton. Both these persons, unfortunately for Clifford, happened to be gifted by nature with uncommon talent, which was all employed in giving to the follies and insipidities of fashion a
[p. 112]
certain interest, grace and brilliancy. The great philosophical truth that knowledge is power, is never more strikingly illustrated than by the influence that a woman of a certain age (that per se most uninteresting period of life) exercises over a young man of ardent feeling and lively imagination.
The narrow limits of our story will not permit us to enter into any of the details of Clifford’s fashionable training. Suffice it that he returned to Bellevue an ultraist of the beau-monde, disdaining whatever was simple and natural as much as a thorough-bred amateur of the Italian opera disdains sweet ‘wood notes wild.’ He was dressed in the extreme of the dominant fashion. We cannot describe the particulars, for we have no place in our memory for the coxcombries of five years since, but his whole array was equivalent to a Broadway exquisite of the present season. Oliver’s curled and frizzed imitation of Hyperion’s curls; the ‘boundless contiguity’ of hairs, called whiskers; the checked dishabille linen; the ‘Jubilee stock;’ the diamond studs; the webfooted (we presume to propose the descriptive epithet) the webfooted pantaloon; the person garnished with certain feminine favors, pretty trophies, such as fantastical emblematic finger rings, a porphyry smelling bottle, appended to the ribband of a quizzing glass; and filled with mousseline ambré or some other exquisite perfume; an almost (would it were quite so!) an almost invisible snuff box, with Irish blackguard;
[p. 113]
and in short all other marks of the most refined dandyism, imperceptible to an unpractised eye, and indescribable by an untechnical pen. And this was the person that, brought into sudden contrast with the heroic image in Theresa’s mind, placed her sweet fancies in so ludicrous a light, and put them to so disorderly a flight. Theresa had, in common with all rational beings, men and women, an instinctive aversion to the unmanly species called dandies—these poor and only worshippers of the image of humanity which they themselves have set up; a dull variety of the monkey race, bearing a resemblance to man, mortifying to the veritable lords of the creation, and no way honorable to themselves.
Dandyism was a sympathetic, not a constitutional disease with Clifford; this Theresa did not know, for she had only seen him when ‘the fit was on him,’ but his mother did. At another time she would have quietly waited for the paroxysm to pass off, but now she had wise and long cherished hopes at stake, and she felt too much either to be or to appear philosophical. Clifford’s sagacity had penetrated the secret of his mother’s wishes, without her having expressly communicated them, and knowing that he was a favorite of fortune, and being conscious of qualities that were at present quite hidden under his masquerade dress, and obscured by his temporary indifference to the simple pleasures of home and life, it was not an evidence of very extravagant self love that he
[p. 114]
should suspect Theresa of partaking his mother’s views, and should consequently be as shy of her as the bird of the decoy he has discovered to be set for him. Fortunately there was no pondering of the matter in our happy heroine’s gay and innocent heart; she was not disturbed by even a suspicion of Clifford's mental conclusions. Her elastic spirit soon rose from the first pressure of dissappointment, and she returned with her usual animation to her accustomed pleasures. She thought Mr Clifford a very conceited, disagreeable person; that Bellevue had been far pleasanter without him; that he was the last man in the world, that if she ever did marry (a supposition a young lady is apt to make mentally,) the last man in the world she would marry!
Theresa had yet to learn that there is nothing in this uncertain life more uncertain than the final resolution of a young lady of seventeen!
Clifford soon perceived that there was nothing affected nor equivocal in her indifference to him, and he was piqued by it. His natural tastes revived in the salutary atmosphere of home. He observed Theresa more attentively, and to observe was to feel the attraction of her loveliness. He caught himself, when he heard her laugh breaking forth in a distant part of the house, (never was a laugh more heartfelt and musical,) starting forward to listen, and involuntarily responding a faint echo; and once, when she was patting the neck of a spirited little black pony, on
[p. 115]
which she had been taking a solitary morning ride, he was betrayed into kissing, with real emotion, the whitest, most deeply dimpled and prettiest hand in the world.
These and some other trifling circumstances began to intimate that a change was coming ‘o’er the spirit of his dream;’ still he was not so deeply interested as to demonstrate Rosalind's infallible signs; the ‘hose ungartered,’ the ‘bonnet unbanded,’ the ‘shoe untied,’ the ‘careless desolation;’ but he was still ‘point device in all his accoutrements.’ A pastoral poet's hero may love without hope; but not so a fashionable young man of twenty one.
Newton Clifford’s love, for he did actually, and that in a few days, feel an irresistible attraction towards Theresa; his love was of the most confident nature. It was true that from day to day Theresa perceived more and more of his agreeable qualities coming out, and once or twice it crossed her mind that she should, if she had not expected so much—at times—she should think Newton Clifford quite interesting.
In the meantime the period of her visit was drawing to a close. Mrs Clifford, who was eagerly watching the signs of the times, wrote to Theresa's father to beg an extension of her visit; one week more was granted, but then the order of return was peremptory.
On the day before her departure, Theresa went to take leave of her friend Lilly. She had been to the cottage but once before since Clifford’s arrival. On
[p. 116]
that occasion she went to cull from the collection of flies designed for him, those she had made. The little fly manufacturer remonstrated, but in vain. Theresa possessed herself of them, and strewed them to the winds.
As she now approached the hut, she heard voices. Clifford was speaking in a tone of animated kindness to his poor protegé. ‘This is just what I fancied Clifford was before I saw him,’ thought Theresa, and that very thought made her pause at the threshold of the door, from an undefined feeling of awkwardness. While she stood there she heard Lilly say, ‘Here are some flies, Mr Newton, which I made for a present for you, if any thing can be called a present that I give to you.’ Clifford expressed his gratitude by admiring them extravagantly, and then selecting one, ‘This,’ he exclaimed, ‘is the very prettiest I ever saw. I can almost believe, with the poor little fish, that it is a real fly. If you could make me a dozen such as this, Lilly, for a friend of mine?’
Lilly stammered in her reply. ‘Oh!’ thought Theresa, who rightly conjectured that it was one of her own manfacture accidentally left among Lilly’s; ‘Oh, the silly girl will certainly betray me.’ Poor Lilly was confounded between the obligation of her promise to Miss Walsingham, on no account to betray her agency in the manufacture, the feminine desire of permitting the secret to evolve, and the necessity of confessing that she could not make flies equal to the specimen
[p. 117]
in Mr Clifford’s hand. In this dilemma she did what any other simple girl would have done, smiled, blushed, and faltered, and said she would do her very best for Mr Newton, but she could no way in the world make anything so pretty, her fingers were stiffened with the rheumatism, and besides, they were never handy enough for such a piece of work as that.’
‘Then you did not make this particular one, Lilly; who in the name of wonder did?’
Before Lilly could reply, and with the intention of preventing her, Theresa entered, but poor Lilly, far as she was from all duplicity, was betrayed by her surprise and confusion, into keeping the promise to the ear, and breaking it to the sense. She threw a speaking glance at Theresa, hung down her head, laughed outright, and turned away. Theresa blushed too, and was quite too much embarrassed, and provoked that she was embarrassed, to make any explanation, while Clifford with the utmost complacency bowed in acknowledgement to her, and taking out a small tablet case, deliberately placed the fly between its leaves.
‘At any rate,’ exclaimed Theresa, half amused and half vexed, and unintentionally verifying Newton’s fortunate conjecture, ‘at any rate‘. Mr Clifford, I did not mean that you should have it.’
‘Perhaps not. We anglers, Miss Theresa, can never foresee exactly which fish will bite when we bait our hook.’
[p. 118]
An older, a more scrupulous, or more fastidious lady than Theresa Walsingham, might have found something offensive in this ‘perhaps,’ this allusion to ‘angling’ and ‘baiting,‘ but it was not in character for her to weigh and sift words; she really did not perceive any particular meaning in Clifford’s; the secret being out, she had no farther concern about the matter. She had never seen him so animated, natural, and pleasing, and after chiding, Lilly for betraying her, and kindly slipping into her hand a farewell gift, she returned with Clifford to Bellevue, but not till Lilly had contrived to say aside to him— ‘Keep the fly for a luck-penny, as they call it, Mr Newton.’ Her eye followed them, till she lost sight of them under the shadows of the lindens that grew on the river’s side, she weaving, the while, the web of destiny, as dexterously as a ‘weird sister.’
It was not one of the fairest days of summer, but the spirits of seventeen and twenty-one are not tempered by the weathergage. A dyspeptic may look at the sky and the vane before he smiles, but our gay pair were in a humor to smile in spite of clouds or storms. Clifford was flattered and elated by the little incident of the morning. It had confirmed all his prepossessions. He had discovered that he was under the influence of Theresa’s attractions. He had made up his mind, at the first propitious moment to tell his love; that moment had arrived, and with it
[p. 119]
came, not doubts of his success, but some natural shrinkings.
He began by speaking of her return in a desperate tone of voice; she replied, but not in an according key.
‘Then you will have no regrets at leaving Bellevue?’ he said half reproachfully.
‘Indeed I shall! There is no place in the world l love so well, but home; and there is nobody I love so well as Mrs Clifford, but papa.’
‘Nobody!’ echoed Clifford with a look and tone of voice that was meant to convey a world of meaning; ‘can no one rival them in your heart, Theresa?’
‘Oh the children! of course; I doat on the children; and Willie, my pet Willie, oh, I shall never love any thing half so much as I love Willie.’
‘Are you quite certain of that?’ asked Clifford.
‘Yes perfectly,’ she replied in the same careless manner.
‘Is this coquetry, the first—last sin of a pretty woman, or is it truth and nature?’ thought Clifford; but before he had solved the riddle, and as they emerged from the shaded walk into the open grounds, they were joined by his mother, who coming from a different direction, was, like them, bending her steps towards home.
Her maternal eye read the deep interest that was legible on her son’s countenance; and Theresa’s cheek bright with exercise and spirits, spoke the confirma-
[p. 120]
tion of her hopes. ‘The dear child has reason to feel happy,’ was the mother’s thought, and vexed that she had interrupted a tête à tête that she believed could be verging but to one conclusion, she said something about ‘old people being in the way,’ and was hurrying past them; but Theresa slipt her arm into Mrs Clifford’s and detained her; ‘I do not know how it may be with old people,’ she said, ‘but I am sure any party is the pleasanter for having you in it.’ Mrs Clifford, half gratified at her favorite’s affection, and half vexed at the inopportune moment she had taken to evince it, was obliged to yield to the gentle constraint of Theresa’s arm, and walk beside her. But her mind, still on one thought intent, she gave Clifford a bunch of flowers she had been culling during her walk. ‘There,’ said she, ‘Newton, when I was young, lovers of common ingenuity would have discoursed with those flowers for an hour, without articulating a word.’
‘I am ignorant of their language, mother, but if you will teach me, I will endeavor to profit by your instructions.’
‘Attend to me then, and do not be looking at Theresa; she knows nothing at all of the matter. There is a passion flower, the emblem of hope; there a little bachelor’s button, “hope even in the depths of misery;” that hollow hearted fox glove is insincerity; that wild geranium, cruelty; the honey-
[p. 121]
suckle, fidelity; periwinkle, friendship, a poor article when you want love; the Lavender confession— “She, Lavender to him sent, owning her love,” Hope, cruelty, fidelity! &c. It would be a poor brain that could not make a moving tale from these cabalistic words.’
‘But,’ said Theresa in all simplicity, ‘there is no emblem for love, and that is the basis of all the rest.’
‘True, true, most true, my dear Theresa,’ replied Mrs Clifford, smiling, ‘but I passed over the rosebud, for I thought the simplest, most unlearned in the floral vocabulary, knew that meant a declaration of love; and so it should, for it unfolds into what is sweetest and most beautiful in nature.’
‘True love, ma’am, you mean?’ asked Theresa; and it was a bona fide enquiry.
Mrs Clifford laughed, Newton thrust the rosebud, which he seemed for the last minute to have been most critically examining, into his bosom, and they all mounted the steps to the piazza, where half a dozen of the family were assembled awaiting them.
The following morning was the morning of Theresa’s departure. Mrs Clifford, as she had before promised, and Mrs Clifford’s son, which had not before been indicated, were to attend her home. As they left the town of Bellevue, on their way to the pier, where they were to embark in the steamboat, Theresa turned to give one parting look to the beautiful flowers that in unlimited profusion embel-
[p. 122]
lished the place. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed ‘I wish I had thought to gather a bouquet to take with me.’
Clifford offered to repair her omission, and turned again up the avenue, and did not rejoin the ladies till they had nearly reached the shore. ‘Oh,’ said Theresa, as she took the flowers from him, ‘have you been gone so long and got nothing but buds! What possessed him,’ she continued, ‘to put in this little withered wild rosebud among these fresh ones?’ and she threw it away, and cooly tucked the stems of the rest under her belt riband; the withered bud was that which Clifford had the day before put into his bosom, and he had now added it to the bouquet; to him it seemed instinct with the feelings of the heart which had been throbing against it for the last twelve hours. Fortunately he had walked on, as if to look out for the boat, and did not hear her, but his mother did, and exclaimed in a tone of reproach ‘Theresa!’ Theresa thought her displeasure related solely to the bouquet. ‘Dear Mrs Clifford,’ she said, kissing her in her own affectionate manner, ‘do not be angry with me; there is, I own it, there is nothing so precious as moss rosebuds.’
Mrs Clifford always obeyed the French rule, ‘Whenever there are two interpretations of a phrase, receive the most agreeable.’ ‘My own dear, dear child!’ she exclaimed, returning Theresa’s embrace with a warmth and emotion she did not at all comprehend, and which was not rendered more intelligible
[p. 123]
by the delighted gaze, with which, as she turned, she perceived Clifford was surveying them. Some acquaintances appeared at this moment, and no farther explanation was then possible, as they were immediately transferred to the thronged deck of a steamboat. Theresa was in irrepressible spirits, and for this, Mrs Clifford and her son had but one interpretation. The one had perhaps forgotten, and the other never yet learned, that all deep emotions are serious. The truth was, Theresa had forgotten the conventional language of the rosebuds; her mind was preoccupied with home images; no brain-woven romance, but with filial thoughts of her beloved father, and of the eager eyes and glad hearts of the little tribe awaiting her. Such a heart as Theresa’s, so full of delicate, strong, and unchanging affections, was not to be lightly won, and this Clifford was yet to learn at the expense of well requited sacrifices.
Secure for the present in the estimate of all he had to confer, and in the assurance of a self-complacency that no disappointment had ever yet disturbed, he retired to a solitary corner of the cabin to enjoy in writing to her, a more exclusive and satisfactory communion with Theresa, than he could amid the throng that encompassed her on the deck.
The letter was a joyous rhapsody; the interpreter of his soul, ‘and faithful to its fires;’ full of blissful feelings and blissful hopes. He filled it, crossed it, enclosed, and sealed it with the well known device of
[p. 124]
a laurel leaf, and the motto, ‘Je no change qu’en mourant;’ a motto presumptuously applied to many a passion that has had even a briefer existence than a summer’s leaf.
Thus prepared, the letter awaited an auspicious moment for delivery. That moment arrived, when Clifford handed Theresa from the carriage that had conveyed her from the boat to her father’s door. ‘This speaks for me,’ he whispered, ‘I will be with you again in ten minutes.’ But joyous shouts and bounding steps were already ringing in Theresa’s ears, and she heard nothing else, and did not think again of Clifford, till in less than ten minutes he returned, expecting to find Theresa awaiting to reciprocate the expression of those sentiments of which he had just communicated the delightful certainty. She was there, seated on her father’s knee, recounting the pleasures of her jaunt; her pet Willie stood beside her on the sofa, his curly head lying fondly on her shoulder, and one little mischievous hand picking unheeded, one by one, the rosebuds from her waist, and throwing them on the floor, where two or three of the little urchins were dividing the spoil. The letter— the letter on which was suspended the destiny of life, had been dropped and forgotten by Theresa, who had never given it one glance, and if one thought, had supposed it to be one of the numerous unimportant packages belonging to her. Her sister Ellen, a busy, prying little daughter of Eve, had picked it
[p. 125]
up, torn off the seal, and at the moment Clifford entered was uttering a sort of jargon which she called reading it. Never, at any moment of her life, had Theresa looked more lovely than now, when her sweet face was lighted with the glow of those innocent and tender affections that are kindled at Nature’s altar, and inspired by the breath of the Almighty.
But Clifford had looked for something far more precious in his eyes, and mortified and disappointed, he was scarcely conscious of Mr Walsingham’s polite reception; hardly comprehended his words as he said, ‘You are deafened by the noisy joy of my children; they are half wild at the return of their elder sister; and I,’ he added, wiping his moistened eyes, ‘am hardly less a child than any one of them.’ Clifford in vain struggled to reply and to recover his self-possession. Fortunately, all were too much occupied with their own sensations to observe his, and he seized his unread letter, thrust it into his pocket, and made his escape.
__________
I know not what, if any, explanation followed, but three years subsequent I met the same parties at Bellevue. Clifford then with a slight abatement for a very youthful imagination, might have realized the
[p. 126]
early visions of Theresa. The few dregs of folly in his composition, had in the first fermentation risen to the surface, and worked off. How much he might have been indebted to the purifying influence of‘ ‘le grand sentiment,’ (for who shall define or limit its power,) we know not, but with all our preference for our heroine, we must confess he was worthy of her true and tender heart.'
Of his dandyism there was no relic, save the identical safety chain he had formerly worn; but instead of the fantastic watch appended to it, I discovered, (though it was scrupulously worn beneath the vest,) the little fly so elaborately wrought by Theresa, and of which, no doubt, he was well informed of the consecrating history. As to Theresa, she was unchanged; the same spontaneous flow of rich feelings, the same beautiful simplicity of character and naturalness, made more graceful, but not in the least impaired or obscured by the polish of the world.
One visible change indeed there was, and it was expressed in the quick mutations of Theresa’s beautiful color; in the tender drooping of her eye; in word and action. A stronger, deeper, more controlling sentiment had taken possession of her heart than filial love, or than the affectionate devotion of an Elder Sister.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
The Elder Sister
Subject
The topic of the resource
Family bonds, love, wooing, inner beauty.
Description
An account of the resource
A selfless daughter who has taken up her deceased mother's family duties is rewarded with a trip to visit a family friend, whose son develops romantic feelings for her.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
The Youth's Keepsake
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Boston: Carter and Hendee
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1830 [pub. 1829]
Contributor
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Kristina Curtis, D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Collected (with revisions) as "The Eldest Sister" in Tales and Sketches, 183-203, 1835.
Language
A language of the resource
English
"As You Like It"
1829
Blowzabella
Broadway
Country
dandy
daughters
Eve
fathers
filial piety
fishing flies
George Crabbe
giftbooks
June
maternal death
Romance
Rosalind
Shakespeare
Siblings
sons
Tales and Sketches - First Series
the language of flowers
The Youth's Keepsake
widowers
widows
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/4347/archive/files/1d70e019237307393ebab3ce5ce28c43.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=nIa7AkRzwOTy7vYg6rjYaQ7DMIpAZQeVXblzqnILUYjHQiFEecYCHFIA9GApJiWTTK1xo6KcF49sNytcWRSdE9dDynUYQQcaW2yTWVSayFtT1ph3xp2qdspefCjCxsLhDQxmAyBtrtrSba2L%7E2LxQZtiFN0NrgEPztQRR7%7E60pKptZ4iNX5l%7Eefq8BIYSZ8vJVqr1JeF4dZKJnNfPDU9hekxYFGHNzbQOK2i6Hvpw5LcCVIU2HDG1fK2ROoDHKATYn8a-uV4l3ZFNwe%7E7e0xb2mNIZuYUsmo2YY6IDVD9gP7O5l0-w55zqahBkavCcFOGNCgJw27iFoEQx3ZcJdUNg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
0491c55e017458d7a3c8662271a1d05e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
1846
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories published in 1846.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document.
LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP.
By Miss Catharine M. Sedgwick
[p. 13]
I was on a visit, not long since, to a friend of mine who, still in the unimpaired maturity of life, is surrounded by grown and growing children. Her summer residence is in the neighborhood of a thickly populated village, and being a ‘most gracious ladye,’ she is sometimes rather over visited by her social neighbors. We had one of those occurrences, which in June give such an out-door freshness and fragrance and always an in-door sweet security – a rainy day. Days of rural dissipation, of rides, drives, walks, and pic-nics had preceded it, and an immense batch of sewing bad accumulated in my friend’s work-basket. She called us all about her and gave to each one an appropriate task. I took a pile of stockings, whose ‘windowed raggedness’ was to me a storied record of our scrambles through the rocky beds of brooks and up the tangled mountain sides. On Clara devolved the task of ‘hook and eyeing,’ as she called it, and little Lilly was to replace the missing strings.
“You are good for nothing at the needle, Anne,” said her mother.
“Least in mamma’s kingdom of heaven,” interposed Anne Reyburn, with an arch smile.
The mother returned a smile, as she said, “You don’t deserve for that the pleasure I had allotted to you; but it does not signify; people seldom get their deserts in this world; so, Miss Anne, you may read to us while we work. There is Boswell’s Johnson on the table – a delightful book for social reading. Open it where you may you cannot fail to fall on something agreeable.”
We were soon arranged for our morning’s business, and a lovelier household group than the mother and her girls I have seldom seen. That compendious and trite description of matrons, ‘fair, fat, and forty,’ might be applied to my friend, but in her case the fortunate physical circumstances were symbols of moral wealth and beauty. That ‘fair and fat’ indicated health produced by a wise simplicity of living, by the most beneficent disposition and the sweetest serenity of temper; and the ‘forty’ was forty years of sunshine with only just so much of clouds as is necessary to keep frail human virtue alive and vigorous. Mrs. Reyburn sat, generously filling her commodious sewing-chair, with her huge work-basket on the table before her; Anne gracefully lounged on the sofa with her book; and the younger girls, their faces ‘bright with thoughtless smiles,’ sat on their low chairs with their pretty work-boxes and sewing implements beside them. The door opened into the garden, fresh and flowery in its young June beauty; the rain pattered musically on the doorstep, and the sweet briar, honeysuckle and mignonette sent in to us their exquisite odors. When the sky brightened for a moment the robins swelled their throats; but the clouds dropping down the distant mountain’s side insured the continuance of the morning’s rain, and we began our business with that placid contentment which comes of having no thought, project, temptation or desire beyond the present moment.
Anne Reyburn was just nineteen. Hardly anyone saw her for the first time without exclaiming ‘how like her mother!’ and to a slight observation there was little difference but that of age – in the daughter, the fervid and startling charm of the morning – in the mother, the more subdued beauty of the advancing day; but on a study, Anne revealed feelings of greater depth than her mother’s and a more impulsive gush, liable too to find their way in more uncertain and more devious channels – a character better fitted to modify circumstances than to be modified by them.
My friend influenced the formation of her children’s characters rather by the atmosphere of affection and kindness with which she surrounded herself, than by any direct bearing of authority upon them. This is an admirable and sufficient agent with gentle and pliable materials. Anne has one of those strong characters that must do for itself the hardest work of education: the training of feeling, the subduing of passion, the maiming of reason, must for itself fight the battle of life.
I am tempted to draw Anne's character, which is curious enough in these days of task-work- education and regular training, (dwarfing she calls it,) but her portrait in all its unframed luxuriance would fill more than the space we have now assigned to other matter, so we leave her to be guessed at by a few glimpses of her heart through her words.
She began to read to us, but she read rather dreamily. Her poetic eyes often wandered to the mist floating over the mountains, and finally coming upon Dr. Johnson's saying, that he believed
[p. 14]
marriages would be full as happy as they are if matches were made by the lord chancellor, she threw down the volume, saying “What a detestable old goose he is! What did he know about happy marriages!”
“Doctor Johnson, an old goose!” said one of the little younger girls; “Well, Anne, I wonder what discovery you will make next!:
“I dare say, Clara, you would like a husband of the chancellor's choosing, and would take him with a 'thank you, sir!' and ‘if you like him, sir, I am sure I shall.’ Now heaven save me even from our dear chancellor, M____s, choosing a husband for me!”
“And yet, Anne," said her mother, “I am not sure that you would not in the end be happier with a husband of any wise man's selection than with one of your own choosing.”
“I don't care about the 'end,' mamma; I wish to be happy in the beginning.”
A light laugh, which Anne felt to be against her, ran round the circle. She waited till it was past, and then said, very earnestly, “You may all laugh, but is there one of you, from Miss____ down to Lilly, that would not think it a disgrace to marry any man but him of your own heart's election?”
“Certainly not, Anne,” replied her mother, “but you, my dear child, I presume would have that election decided by love alone.”
“Assuredly, for that alone influences the heart. Reason and judgment, which weigh heavily in the lord chancellor's balance, are not of a feather's weight in the heart's scale.”
“But utterly worthless as reason and judgment are in themselves, Anne,” said Mrs. Reybum, with a grave smile, “may they not be allowed to sanction or influence, or even to decide an insufficient love?”
“No, no—oh no, mamma! An insufficient love is no love at all; is good for nothing. The man that I marry I must love with a love that doubts nothing, fears nothing, hopes all things and believes all things. The whole world's favor would not advance him one jot in my affection, nor its disfavor throw one shadow over him.”
“The 'whole world!' That is talking in very general terms; but suppose a case. If you had a lover whom you liked extremely but did not love, according to your extravagant notions of love"____
“Extravagant, mamma!”
“Do not interrupt me, Anne. Suppose that your father and I approved him; would choose him from all the world for you; that your brothers were his warm friends; that the children loved him”____
“You need not suppose anything more, mamma. It would not all have the slightest influence on me—it could not. Love comes and goes whither it will. If reasons were as thick as blackberries they could not create love; and marriage is disgraceful without love—that
'Most sacred fire, that burneth mightily
In living breasts.’”
“I grant you, Anne but remember that same poetic oracle whom you have quoted, also says—
'Wonder it is to see in diverse minds,
How diversely love doth his pageants play
And shows his power in variable kinds.'
“Now I believe that an affection far short of—or rather far different from what you would call love, may make the basis of the happiest marriage. Do not you?" said my friend, appealing to me, and trusting that as her cotemporary I had arrived at her more sober point of view.
I confess my sympathies were with the daughter; but I compromised between the opposing parties so far as to say, that I deemed love without reason perilous, reason without love inadmissible; and the only sure basis, love sanctioned by reason.
Mrs. Reyburn admitted that in theory I was right, but she contended that there were many modifications and aspects of love; that characters were so various, and that life was so different in reality from what youth pictured it; that she had seen so many different loves that 'hoped all things and believed all things ' wrecked in the first year of marriage; that, for her part, she would rather her girls would trust to a more rational and calmer sentiment than that which made the inspiration of poetry and the basis of romance.
“I will tell you a true story girls,” she said; “a 'love-story,' I call it. Perhaps it will rectify some of your opinions. My heroine was a friend of Miss ____ 's as well as of mine. She knew as well as I, the parties and circumstances, and will vouch for their truth, though indeed there is nothing in them so incredible as to require a voucher.
“A Mr. Ewing, the friend of our parents, died immediately after some reverses in his business, and left his wife with a large young family and an impaired fortune. Mrs. Ewing took a small house, and let her two best rooms to a single gentleman who boarded with her and paid her liberally—Mr. John Sheafe. He was a singular man this Mr. John Sheafe, but his singularities were graceful and pleasing. He was about thirty when he first took possession of his rooms. Dear Mrs. Ewing! she used to say he gave her no more trouble than a kitten, and yet he had his particularities. Though his rooms were furnished with every convenience and elegance, he did not scruple to let in all the little Ewings—a perfect menagerie of wild young things they were—and they might wrap themselves in the bed-clothes, pull
[p.15]
down the curtains, pile up the chairs, rattle down the shovel and tongs, any thing but touch his pictures and books, and the little sinners, like their unhappy progenitors, were very apt to seize on the forbidden things, and then they were driven forth from their paradise and the doors shut upon them. Sheafe would try his best to look like a thunder storm, but the sun always shone through the clouds, and the little wretches were weather-wise enough to know that no storm could gather there, and though Sheafe had told them they never should enter his room again, and Mrs. Ewing with her sternest face, (poor Mrs. Ewing! it was as difficult for her as for her lodger to counterfeit wrath,) assured them Mr. Sheafe was very angry ‘indeed,’ before twenty fours passed away they had one by one stolen in, and were as lawless and uproarious and as welcome as ever. Sheafe had one peculiarity that puzzled Mrs. Ewing to the day of her death. Though of a spirit so social, that in every relation in life he felt and made felt what has been happily called fellow-being-ism, he had an aversion to being included in social arrangements. He prized above every thing else his individual independence, and when Mrs. Ewing would say ‘Mr. Sheafe, our friends so and so, are going to have a pic-nic on Slaten Island,’ or ‘are going to Long Island,’ or wherever the party of pleasure might be, ‘and I have promised you will join us’— or ‘we are going to have such a pleasant little party this evening, all your friends—do come home,’ he invariably replied ‘no—don't count on me—it is not probable I can be there’—or ‘be here,’ and finally perhaps at the very moment they began to recover from their disappointment of his not being with them, he appeared among them, the very soul of all their pleasures."
“Mamma," interrupted Clara Reyburn, “you said you were going to tell a love story?”
“So I am, my dear, and I am just introducing you to one of the parties.”
“That Mr. Sheafe, mamma? Why you said he was thirty years old!”
“Yes, Clara, and he was thirty-five, before I come to the love part of my story.”
“Oh horrid, mamma!”
Mrs. Reyburn proceeded:
“Mr. Sheafe was not rich, but he had an easy fortune and few wants, and he continued to let it fall, like the quiet and plentiful dews of heaven, on the right and on the left. There was no burden in his favors. For five years he managed to make Mrs. Ewing live in a house rent free, of which he said he had taken a lease for a bad debt, that he had long ago given up as hopeless. He kept a servant and secretly paid him double wages for doing Mrs. Ewing's work. He had always some poor friend in the shape of a French dancing or music-master that he wanted to give a little money to, and Mrs. Ewing would particularly oblige him if she would allow the children to take lessons of them, as he did not like to ask them to take money without an equivalent. This was something like reversing the old adage of ‘killing two birds with one stone.’
“You will easily perceive that such a man, in the course of four or five years, would so involve himself with the concerns of a family, as to become indispensable to their happiness. In this five years Catharine or Kate Ewing, as we used to call her, had passed from the awkward age of her fourteenth to her nineteenth year.”
“Oh, now the love story is coming,” cried Clara Reyburn.
“And reason versus love,” said Anne.
Her mother smiled, and went on:—
“Kate was a light-hearted, happy-tempered young creature. She had been from the beginning a prime favorite of Sheafe's, but for the last two or three years he had appeared rather more reserved toward her. While she was a child he was unlimited in his beneficence to her. Her room was filled with his gifts, books and pictures. All her books—the prettiest of rose-wood book-cases—all were his gifts. All her expensive masters had been employed by him. Now, he ceased to be her open benefactor, some good earthly providence seemed still watching over her, and showering favors upon her. If a new book worth buying appeared, she was the first to possess it, and never had she occasion for a bouquet but a bouquet of the choicest flowers appeared at the door. Kate was not very far-sighted in such matters. She did not see why if Mr. Sheafe continued to give, he could not give openly as he had always done. Her simple hearted mother was easily eluded.
“’I know very well, Mr. Sheafe,’ she said, soon after these anonymous gifts began, ‘where Kate's presents come from. I may thank the giver if she cannot.’
“Mr. Sheafe looked grave and displeased. A rare look for him, for of all the men I ever knew he was the most cheerful, the most joyous, as he had a right to be, for he was the best. He said, ‘I perceive you mean your thanks for me, Mrs. Ewing. You are wasting them; whoever the giver of these trifles to Kate may be, he should be allowed the secrecy he chooses.’
“ ‘Well, I assure you,' replied Mrs. Ewing, completely baffled, ‘I have not the smallest notion who it is. I never once thought of anyone but you. To be sure I ought to have remembered that you never in years past made any secret of your gifts.’ A smile that in spite of him, played over Mr. Sheafe's lips, and a blush that deepened
[p. 16]
his rather deep colored cheek, would have told the truth to a more suspicious person than dear Mrs. Ewing. But she, as you know, Miss ____, always took the sense that met the ear.”
“But, mamma," interrupted Anne Rayburn, “I trust Mr. Sheafe was not a rosy bachelor. I can imagine a girl of Miss. Ewing’s age, falling desperately in love with a man, even if he were forty, if he were tall, with a pale, marble complexion, and fine large dark eyes and plenty of black hair.”
“Oh Anne, my dear,” replied her mother, laughing, “nothing can be more unlike your possible lover than my real one. Mr. Sheafe was not above the middle stature; a little inclined to the rotund and the ruddy; and as to his hair, once, alas! Of the softest, lightest brown, it had retreated so far from his forehead that he wore----”
“Oh, not a scratch, mamma; don't say he wore a scratch!”
“Not quite a scratch, Anne, but a small nicely fitted patch to hide the ravages of time. Plenty of black hair indeed! You will hardly find that on a man's head of thirty-five from Maine to Georgia.”
“But a patch, mamma! Baldness is better than that. My father's head now is beautiful; rather bald, to be sure, but the little hair that he has, is soft, bright, and curly.”
“Oh, father's head is lovely!” cried Clara Reyburn!
“Oh yes, I guess it is!” exclaimed in chorus half a dozen young voices.
Mrs. Reyburn and I exchanged smiles, she proceeded:
“Even the patch, Anne, did not conceal or deform the fine classic shape of his head, which with its moral and intellectual developments would have charmed a phrenologist. I am sure no large dark eye ever so expressed, as his beaming gray one did, the kindling and discharging of feeling. His lips between humor, kindness, tenderness and sympathy, were always in a sort of graceful movement, and in short, though he had none of your requisites of beauty, he was the most agreeable-looking man I ever saw.”
“Agreeable looking! Well, was Miss Kate Ewing agreeable looking too?”
Till now I had listened to what was to me an old story with as much interest as the young people, but now I interposed; and with enthusiasm, at the recollection of my charming cotemporary, I described her in terms that made all my young hearers exclaim:
“Oh, she must have been beautiful, and so interesting.”
And Clara Reybum said:—
“I hope that 'old bachelor' didn't dare to fall in love with her?”
“Not, perhaps, what you would quite call falling in love, resumed her mother, but the love he felt for her as a child, grew insensibly into a strange sentiment, and one bright day he was suddenly betrayed into a disclosure for which Kate was totally unprepared. She burst into tears, and frankly told him she had never thought of him as a lover, and never could; but that she loved him so dearly she would rather have died than told him so. A total change came over him—in place of his perpetual good humor and sunny cheerfulness, an immovable gravity and occasional melancholy. Poor Mrs. Ewing could not divine what it meant. She first thought his affairs must be embarrassed, and then she fancied it was an incipient fever, and begged him to take advice. She told him all the house would be wretched, if an evil overtook him, and called his observation to Kate, who, she said, had not smiled for a week. He made no reply to her, but the next morning she was astonished by the information that he was going abroad, and that he and his servant were packing up his furniture to be removed to a place of storage.
“It was a wretched day at the Ewings. Poor Mrs. Ewing walked up and down her room, wringing her hands and wiping her eyes, and wondering and wondering (till Kate wished herself deaf that she might not hear) what could have happened to Mr. Sheafe. Kate went to her worsted work, but her eyes were so blinded with tears, that she could not see it; she took up a book, but she did not know whether she read backwark or forward. She sat down to her piano and played so false, that even Mr. Sheafe heard and noted it.
“Mrs. Ewing saw the carpenters bringing in empty boxes.
“ ‘Dear me,' she said;’ it seems just as if a coffin was coming into the house.”
“ ‘Oh,’ thought Kate, in the impatience of her first misery; ‘I wish it were me, and that I were to be carried away dead in it!’
“ ‘Ma'am!'’ said the chambermaid, rushing in, ‘you never saw such an awful change as there is in Mr. Sheafe's room: its day changed into night —its as solitary as the tomb.’
“ ‘Is he gone, Jane,’ said Kate, starting up.
“ ‘Oh no, Miss—Lord how pale you look—but dismal like a tomb, I mean. The wardrobe is emptied—the books are all in boxes—the pictures, every one of them, even that pretty likeness of Mr. Sheafe that a body can never look at without feeling that he is just going to speak something pleasant—that is in a box, and it looked up at me somehow sorrowful, it did ma'am; and his dressing gown, that always hung there—always with the red cords and tassels hanging down by
[p. 17]
the bed-post, so lively and like Mr. Sheafe, that is packed up too.’
“ ‘Jane, do go away,’ said Kate, petulantly; ‘you make my head ache.’
“ ‘Why, Miss Kate!’ said Jane, and as she shut the door after her, she murmured to herself, ‘her heart ache more like, and its good enough; for her, for I know she is at the bottom of it.’
“A few moments after, in flounced Sophy, the, cook, and after turning her eye from Mrs. Ewing to her daughter, “ ‘Its true, ma'am,’ she said; ‘I see its true; I could not believe Jane. Well, how things does turn topsy-turvy in this world. I shall have to go too. I can't stand it. He never kept the dinner waiting, and never came too soon, and fretted for it. Who'll regulate the clock, now? I shall never take no more satisfaction in roasting a goose. He always said I did it to a turn.’ The tears actually rolled over her round, black cheeks. She continued: ‘With most every body, the scum will rise sometimes, but he's as clear as spring water. He knows what is what, Mr. Sheafe does. He says I’m the only one short of old England that can cook a Christian beefsteak, and he always has something funny to say. Oh he's sugar and spice too!’
“A poor humble widow, who served the house from her thread and needle basket, opened the door gently at this moment, and asked:
“ ‘Is it true, ma'am? is Mr. Sheafe going?’
“ ‘Yes.’
“ ‘The Lord have mercy then on the poor.’
“Every new voice brought forth a fresh shower of tears from Mrs. Ewing. While matters were at this point, the door was opened a crack, and Mr. Sheafe said in a broken voice, 'I am going out for an hour; when the carpenter calls, Mrs. Ewing, be kind enough to tell him the boxes are ready to nail up.’
“Half an hour after, when the carpenter did call, Kate sprang up and said, ‘I will speak to him, mamma.’ An hour or two more passed away, when Mr. Sheafe came in. He had a pass-key to the street door, and as he opened it and shut it, very gently, no one was apprized of his entrance.
“Of all the men I ever knew, he had the greatest repugnance to scenes. He dreaded dear Mrs. Ewing's ingenuous demonstrations, so he stole stealthily up the back stairs, and first entered his lodging room. The door communicating with his parlor was wide open, and through it he saw his books were replaced in his book-case; he advanced a little farther, the pictures were re-hung in their places—a little farther still, and he saw Kate Ewing standing on a chair before his picture which she had that moment replaced, and he heard her say:
“ ‘Dear, dear Mr. Sheafe—never, never shall you leave this house if I can help it.’”
My friend paused. Smiles were on her lips and tears in her eyes. It could no longer be concealed that she was the heroine of her own story. I looked round upon her children. Surprise and discovery were flashing from Anne Reyburn's bright eyes.
The younger girls cried, “Go on, go on, mamma,” and “what did Mr. Sheafe say?” and, “what could Miss Kate say?”
“I do not remember, my dear children. It was one of those rich moments of life when much more is felt than said; but this I know very well, that from that time to this, I have never repented the repentance of that morning ____ "
My friend was interrupted by the entrance of her husband. He had been into the village and brought home a basket of fruit and flowers which he threw among the children. His face had that expression of beaming, paternal happiness, which came from the consciousness that his footstep once over his threshold, was the welcomest sound ever heard there.
I think there was a slight struggle in Anne Reyburn's bosom, as there will be when old ideas are giving place to new ones, but it was soon over. A joyous light flashed from her soul as her eye fell on her father, and kissing her mother, she said, in a subdued voice, “Nobody but yourself, mamma, would have made me believe that yours was not a love-match in the beginning as it is in the end. Well, well, I have had many a dream of love; if I ever have such a reality as yours, I shall be quite content.”
The light just dawned on Clara. “Why, Anne!” she exclaimed; “Goodness, mamma! Mr. Sheafe, indeed! Dear, dear Mr. Sheafe! If you had shabbed him, mamma, I never would have forgiven you!”
A pretty family scene followed; a chorus of exclamations, a few tears, many questions, some jokes on the discarded patch, and a ringing of laughing voices ---- but here the curtain falls.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Look Before You Leap
Subject
The topic of the resource
Marriage, courtship, love vs. reason.
Description
An account of the resource
A mother tells her daughters the story of a young woman who decided to marry an older man of whom she was fond but not passionately in love.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine. (January 1846): 13-17.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Edited by John Inman and Robert A. West.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
January 1846
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kristina Curtis; D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Collected in The Irving Offering, 168-86. New York: Leavitt, & Company, 1851. [pub. 1850]
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1846
bachelors
balding
Columbian Lady's and Gentleman's Magazine
courtship
daughters
Edmund Spenser
fathers
James Boswell
Life of Samuel Johnson
Love
love stories
marriage
Mothers
picnic
reason
servants
social reading
The Fairie Queen
widows